Risk

By Crispin Sartwell

As we deal with our anxiety about the DC sniper we are being told by those who claim to assess risk that we're a whole lot more likely to be killed in a car wreck, for example. Most folks, they say, are incredibly bad at rationally assessing risk.

We tend, they tell us, to be overly concerned when the events are sensational, when the media blankets us with coverage, and - ironically - when the events are unusual (which itself makes them more newsworthy).

In fact, we heard the same thing repeatedly over the summer about the "epidemic" of child abductions: the risk is low. You're more likely to get struck by lightning.

The people who tell us these things seek both to reassure us and to ridicule us, both to tell us what's rational and point out our irrationality. But they are, putting it mildly, not as rational as they think they are. Risk assessment is risky.

What's the chance of a human being dying of gunfire? What's the chance of a human being dying of sniper fire? What's the chance of an American dying of sniper fire? What's the chance of someone living in the Washington area dying of sniper fire? What's the chance of a resident of Montgomery County dying of sniper fire? A resident of Kensington? Which is the right question? Any? All?

What about if you live, like me, in southern Pennsylvania, and work in Baltimore? What if you live in California? What if you visit the DC area for three hours or three days?

What's the chance for someone of your race, your income level, your age, your gender, your size? Or are those things irrelevant? Well, are they?

What's the chance, given that you go to middle school, shop at crafts stores, fill up often with gas, or not?

What's the chance today, as opposed to two days ago, or three weeks ago or twenty years ago? New Yorkers were incredibly unlikely to die in an explosion in the World Trade Center as of September 10, 2001, but on September 11, it was by far the most statistically common cause of death.

What's the chance of copycat crimes? Is this an isolated incident or the beginning of a trend?

How big is the group of people with whom you're directly concerned: your family, friends, co-workers etc.? Three? Thirty? And what is the risk to each of these persons?

Now, as you try to determine how concerned you should be, let me ask you a couple of other questions. How secure did you feel before this started? How do you usually respond to risk and risks to the people you care about? Are you generally conservative, bold, anxious, oblivious?

What, for that matter, is the rational way to respond to risk, even if it can be assessed?

And even if, by some feat of number-crunching or legerdemain we could obtain meaningful statistical data about the risks to a statistically average person, that could never tell you how likely it is that it could happen to you.

And even if we could tell you that, we wouldn't have managed to differentiate you very effectively from the actual victims; we wouldn't have accounted for the capricious operation of arbitrary fate that puts you in the wrong parking lot at the wrong moment.

Until the professional risk assessors provide get good answers at least to some of these questions, and dozens of others, I suggest they've got no decent information. It may well be that a sort of rough intuition is at least as reliable as any statistical technique that could be devised.

It's precisely for situations like this, in which the variables are far too many and elusive to be assessed, that gut feelings, inexplicable insights, leaps of faith, and sudden waves of unreasoning fear were invented.

So: don't panic, but don't ignore the warnings. Don't play golf in a thunderstorm. And don't let anyone tell you you're stupid.

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Crispin Sartwell teaches philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Contact him through www.crispinsartwell.com