Wednesday, February 07, 2007
For Gary Farber Readers, and those who know Security by FUD
by Ken Houghton
Rational Expectations Revised, anyone?
This report on Bruce Schneier's take on Security methods (via Slashdot), we find why MSFT dominates AAPL in the market (ignoring those reasons-of-monopoly, of course):
There is a “feeling versus reality,” Schneier said. “You can feel secure but not be secure. You can be secure but not feel secure.”
The primitive portion of the brain, called the amygdala, feels fear and incites a fear-or-flight response, he pointed out. “It’s very fast, faster than consciousness. But it can be overridden by higher parts of the brain.”
The neocortex, which in a mammalian brain is associated with consciousness, is slower but “adaptive and flexible,” designed to work toward confronting fear and making decisions to promote security, Schneier said.
The battle in the brain for rational response often plays out in ways that people “exaggerate risks that are spectacular, rare, beyond their control, talked about, international, man-made, immediate, directed against children or morally offensive,” Schneier noted, pointing to lists of exaggerated and downplayed risks.
Rational Expectations Revised, anyone?
