Risk Savvy Quotes

“An intuition is neither caprice nor a sixth sense but a form of unconscious intelligence.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“Knowledge is the antidote to fear.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“We have to learn to live with uncertainty.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“Physicians don’t do the best for their patients because they: practice defensive medicine (Self-defense), do not understand health statistics (Innumeracy), or pursue profit instead of virtue (Conflicts of interest).”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How To Make Good Decisions

“Intelligent decision making entails knowing what tool to use for what problem.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“Defensive medicine: A doctor orders tests or treatments that are not clinically indicated and might even harm the patient primarily because of fear of litigation.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“Many a committee meeting ends with “We need more data.” Everybody nods, breathing a sigh of relief, happy that the decision has been deferred. A week or so later, when the data are in, the group is no further ahead. Everyone’s time is wasted on another meeting, on waiting for even more data. The culprit is a negative error culture, in which everyone lacks the courage to make a decision for which they may be punished.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How To Make Good Decisions

“Einstein’s rule is a general way to realize that less can be more in an uncertain world.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“RISK: If risks are known, good decisions require logic and statistical thinking. UNCERTAINTY: If some risks are unknown, good decisions also require intuition and smart rules of thumb.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“We teach our children the mathematics of certainty—geometry and trigonometry—but not the mathematics of uncertainty, statistical thinking. And we teach our children biology but not the psychology that shapes their fears and desires. Even experts, shockingly, are not trained how to communicate risks to the public in an understandable way. And there can be positive interest in scaring people: to get an article on the front page, to persuade people to relinquish civil rights, or to sell a product.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“cognitive illusions are difficult to overcome. That is why education of the public is doomed to fail and paternalistic strategies to maneuver people into doing the “right” things are the only viable alternative.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How To Make Good Decisions

“Always ask: What is the absolute risk increase?”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“If we knew everything about the future with certainty, our lives would be drained of emotion. No surprise and pleasure, no joy or thrill—we knew it all along. The first kiss, the first proposal, the birth of a healthy child would be about as exciting as last year’s weather report. If our world ever turned certain, life would be mind-numbingly dull. The”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“Rational argument does not always win over old-brain fear, particularly if one spouse tries to educate the other. Yet there is a simple rule of thumb that could have helped that professor: If reason conflicts with a strong emotion, don’t try to argue. Enlist a conflicting and stronger emotion. One”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“There is strong evidence that intuitions are based on simple, smart rules that take into account only some of the available information.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How To Make Good Decisions

“Because these calculations generate precise numbers for an uncertain risk, they produce an illusory certainty.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“Humans appear to have a need for certainty, a motivation to hold on to something rather than to question it. People with a high need for certainty are more prone to stereotypes than others and are less inclined to remember information that contradicts their stereotypes.3”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“One such emotion that conflicts with dread-risk fear is parental concern. The professor might remind his wife that by making them drive long distances she puts the lives of her children—not just that of her husband—at risk.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“In the words of the English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, “Civilization advances by extending the number of operations which we can perform without thinking about them.”19”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop. Mark Twain”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“a world of known risk, in short, risk (Figure 2-3, center). I use this term for a world where all alternatives, consequences, and probabilities are known. Lotteries and games of chance are examples. Most of the time, however, we live in a changing world where some of these are unknown: where we face unknown risks, or uncertainty (Figure 2-3, right). The world of uncertainty is huge compared to that of risk. Whom to marry? Whom to trust? What to do with the rest of one’s life? In an uncertain world, it is impossible to determine the optimal course of action by calculating the exact risks. We have to deal with “unknown unknowns.” Surprises happen. Even when calculation does not provide a clear answer, however, we have to make decisions.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“The quest for certainty is the biggest obstacle to becoming risk savvy. While there are things we can know, we must also be able to recognize when we cannot know something.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“plans.” To be sure, illusions have their function. Small children often need security blankets to soothe their fears. Yet for the mature adult, a high need for certainty can be a dangerous thing. It prevents us from learning to face the uncertainty pervading our lives. As hard as we try, we cannot make our lives risk-free the way we make our milk fat-free.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s mind without another’s guidance. Dare to know! Freedom”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“Risk literacy is the basic knowledge required to deal with a modern technological society. The breakneck speed of technological innovation will make risk literacy as indispensable in the twenty-first century as reading and writing were in previous centuries. Without it, you jeopardize your health and money, or may be manipulated into unrealistic fears and hopes.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“We collect terabytes of information to turn our computers into crystal balls. Yet think of what would happen if our wishes were granted. If we knew everything about the future with certainty, our lives would be drained of emotion. No surprise and pleasure, no joy or thrill—we knew it all along. The first kiss, the first proposal, the birth of a healthy child would be about as exciting as last year’s weather report. If our world ever turned certain, life would be mind-numbingly dull.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

“The most popular of these numbers is called “value at risk.” No judgment or understanding of the assets is necessary; all you have to do is look at the number. Yet the world of money is an uncertain world, not one of known risks.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How To Make Good Decisions

“Take Avastin, the world’s best-selling cancer medicine, with sales of $6 billion in 2010. It is used for the treatment of advanced cancers of the colon, breast, lung, and kidney, among others. An analysis of sixteen trials with more than ten thousand people showed that when Avastin was added to chemotherapy, more people died than when receiving chemotherapy alone.35 Thus, not only did the drug fail to prolong lives of hopeful patients for a few weeks or months, it in fact shortened them. Given the huge amount of money at stake for the pharmaceutical industry (Avastin treatment”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How To Make Good Decisions

“In Western countries, for instance, it is legal for physicians to receive “bribes” in the form of cash by pharmaceutical companies for every new patient they put on their drugs.”
― Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Savvy: How To Make Good Decisions