How I stopped worrying and learned to love risk

Dr. Robert M. Gresham, Contributing Editor | TLT Lubrication Fundamentals June 2017

Forget the Fear Fascists. With time and a little understanding, you can conquer your anxieties.
 

Risk probability is a function of exposure to the risk times the intensity of the risk or hazard.
© Can Stock Photo / karlnaundorf
WHILE SITTING IN A WAITING ROOM I was reading an old article in Time magazine by Jeffery Kluger about the things people worry about. He makes the point that life would be a lot easier if there weren’t so many things to worry about—especially those things trying to do you in. From the very moment we awaken, we might fall out of bed, have an early morning heart attack (40% more common than later in the day), slip in the shower or fall down the stairs on the way to breakfast where we might choke to death on a piece of sausage. Not only that, there are risks you carry with you all your life resulting from genetic predisposition to any number of maladies. And then there are all the worries laid upon us by what I call the Fear Fascists.

These are the folks who try to instill in us a constant anxiety of just about everything: avian flu (no one in the U.S. has died of it), mad cow disease (now a yawner), Ebola virus (more yawning), E. coli in foods, all manner of drugs (whether FDA approved or not), anything that can be called a chemical, anything that is not organic, anything that can be called a preservative or insecticide, anything that can be called genetically engineered (so-called GMAs), carbon-based fuels, global warming, El Niño, eggs (years ago, now I think they are OK), red meat, secondhand smoke and—not to be left out—all possible combinations and permutations of terrorist threats. My head swims just writing it down and I haven’t scratched the surface, but you get the idea.

The Fear Fascists also make sure they continually serve up something new to titillate whatever fear manias you might have. This is because, in time, you learn to accommodate your fear or that latest new fear turns out to be a paper tiger. It is impossible to completely mitigate risk—there is always some level of it. And if you push back, the Fear Fascists of course play the philosopher’s game that you can’t disprove a negative: “Can you absolutely say that XX is not a risk/hazard?” Of course you can’t—and that’s their game. Thus, everything is scary, and thankfully we have them to protect us from ourselves. Oh, rapturous joy!

As an example, you first have to understand that I love my wife. However, some things about her, even after many happy years, are yet an enigma to me. She is very afraid of flying, especially small prop planes. She also is an Olympic-level backseat driver. On the other hand, she rides horses and skis with wild abandon. Yet, the statistics on plane flight suggest that it is one of the safest activities you can do. I’m actually a pretty good driver. Statistics on her other two activities are infinitely less safe. So what’s going on here?

At a symposium I attended some years ago, one of the keynote speakers, Manfred Muller from Lufthansa, spoke on the subject of risk management in the airline industry. He noted that with 750,000 flights per year at Lufthansa, you were 99.99997% safe—that’s pretty safe! By comparison, mountain climbing was more like 40%, NASA accepts 96% and hospitals (medical malpractice) only 98%. Regardless of my wife’s phobia, flying is incredibly safe. This is not about rationality; chalk one up for the Fear Fascists! Zero, for the wife, alas.

So how do we not only withstand all these assaults on our well-being and our sense of serenity but also begin to think about how to manage fear and risk, especially in the context of our jobs?

First, we need to think about what risk is before we can manage it. While there is some inherent risk in everything we do, we can always find ways to reduce risk—but at a cost (financial, emotional, lifestyle, etc.). Risk is actually the probability of harm or some negative outcome. The problem with accurately determining that probability is our fear manias, fed by the Fear Fascists. 

Fear is not necessarily a rational emotion. There are some things we simply dread, but we as humans do not uniformly dread the same things to the same degree. And the more we dread, the more anxious we get—and the more anxious we get, the less precisely we calculate the probability of the thing actually happening. As a result, we tend to ignore the actual probability because our dread overwhelms it. Kluger calls this probability neglect. 

As an example, we might dread something like a slow death from AIDS over a rapid death from a heart attack even though a person is 50 times more likely to die from a heart attack. In fact, a heart attack and cancer dwarf all other causes of death except old age, which is ultimately inevitable. As a result, we dread death by AIDS and tend to ignore factors contributing to heart attacks.

Risk probability is a function of exposure to the risk times the intensity of the risk or hazard. So when we try to calculate the probability of an event happening, we need to be objective (forget the Fear Fascists and our own fear manias) as we determine both the amount of exposure and the intensity of the hazard. How often does it happen? When it does, how bad is it? This probability can be more difficult to determine than it might seem. 

According to Muller, it all goes to the human condition that we are willing to accept much more risk if that risk is self-determined. But if that risk is foreign-determined (and this is where the Fear Fascists get their power), we will not accept anywhere near as much risk. In the case of air flight, we humans—my wife in particular—tend to not accept any risk at all. But of course, 100% safe is not possible.

Another example is the fear of lead poisoning. I know of folks that banned lead crystal goblets, vases, etc., in their house. The addition of lead oxide to glass raises its refractive index and lowers its working temperature and viscosity. The attractive optical properties of lead glass result from the high content of the heavy metal lead, which is toxic. The brilliance of lead crystal relies on the high refractive index caused by the lead content. But the lead oxide is caught up in the glass matrix like an alloy, and it is not going to leach out under any normal circumstances—and even if it were—in infinitesimal quantities. Yet my friends are afraid to touch or drink out of lead crystal goblets. The extremely low probability of risk? Irrelevant to my friends.

In a final example, as you think of all the terrible things the Fear Fascists have you shivering and quaking about, consider the risks associated with texting while driving a car, which they don’t seem to mention very much—but the police do. Texting represents a distraction from controlling your car and being aware of your changing environment as you go down the road. We know from bureau of motor vehicle statistics that distraction, regardless of the source, is a major reason for accidents. Most of us drive frequently, thus a high probability of risk. So why add another source of potential distraction while driving? Because we think, albeit wrongly, that we can control the risk incurred when texting. 

So by understanding that we as humans are most averse to risk we cannot control, and by managing the risk that we can control (especially the human side of that risk) to acceptable statistical levels, we have achieved outstanding safety records in many of our industries worldwide, most notably the airline industry. And to the betterment of my marriage, I now fully understand why my wife doesn’t like to fly and revels in making sure that I always drive the car up to the proper standard—hers (of course, she actually prefers to drive herself). And I have rediscovered the many joys of traveling by train.


Bob Gresham is STLE’s director of professional development. You can reach him at rgresham@stle.org.