healinpor

Tbf human beings do not assess risk well with or without the presence of media. Our psychology is not well equipped to handle it. That's not to say media doesn't make it worse.

This is subtly one of my favorite comments in the history of Hacker News, and I've read a lot of good ones. We're at this weird historical moment where we are enjoying the many rewards of Enlightenment philosophy, but we've forgotten almost all of the stuff they wrote about the weaknesses of human nature. Everyone and their brother is throwing mud at the notions of reason and logic thanks to postmodernism, pointing out their hypocrisies and failures, ignoring the fact that that's the default. Of course human beings are contradictory and full of self-interested behavior and reasoning. They knew that in ancient Greece better than we do! The point is that we have demonstrated we can improve on the baseline condition, not that men have suddenly become angels. It's a false standard and enormously damaging.