Statistics, Nero and Japan

It's been a wild couple of weeks in the world since the second major world Tsunami in my lifetime hit Japan. However, not only did they have a major Tsunami but it has caused one of the worst nuclear disasters in history and will probably rank as second only to the Chernobyl disaster.  But this is stuff you all know unless you've been hiding under a rock for the for the last nine days. What interests me is what this says about our relationship with technology, the media and ourselves.

Firstly, in spite of the fact that it has been 25 years since the last major Nuclear disaster, it is pretty clear to me that we are still dealing with a pretty volatile and unpredictable technology. While we are able to contain it most of the time there are still significant risks. Apparently the scientific community that we trust today, the way we once trusted the clergy, calls these risks, "high impact, low probability events" which in layman's terms means not likely to happen but if it does, FUCK!. 

Now I don't know enough about nuclear power to comment on it's efficacy, I only just learned what actually happens during a meltdown, but that still seems kind of scary. People are heavily impacted on a regular basis by these so-called low probability high impact events, think car accidents, broken bones, etc.

If we choose to look at it statistically it doesn't sound so bad, there's a 1 in a 1000 chance of something happening, it sounds likely that it won't happen. That's one of the problems with statistics it forces us to ask  the wrong question and give the wrong answer, what is the likelihood that something will happen, not likely, therefore it is safe. We would be better to ask ourselves if we are willing to live with the consequences that an unlikely event occurs; or if the benefits out weigh the risk. Blind faith in the improbability of events can have disastrous consequences, as the Japanese are sadly learning. We learned this ourselves in a much more banal example in 2007 when the financial markets crashed as a result, among a number of things, but a series of highly unprobable events.

Modern education and socialization has taught us that the numbers never lie and that when in doubt we should depend on the numbers in our decision making. Trust the numbers has replaced trust in God as the mantra of modern man, the irony might just be that numbers can be as capricious as an otherwise loving God.

So here we are in the cocoon of our modern technology and the safety of our numbers, and we look to Japan, and how can you not look the media is relentless in its coverage of the unfolding events; we look on and wonder at the resiliency of the Japanese people in the face of such uncontrollable cataclysmic events. We go to work, we seek entertainment and we carry on as though it couldn't happen here for surely our numbers are better than theirs, the probability of such unprobable events is even lower here. I have to admit this week I have been feeling like the Emporer Nero who you may recall apparently took up his fiddle and belted out a few good tunes while the city of Rome burned to ashes around him. Since March 11 I have carried on my life as usual, yes I have followed events, but I've been busy with my self-important life, but it feels a bit as though Rome is burning around me.

I've found this particularly acute because it is Japan, we are talking about one of the seven members of the G7, supposedly in the top economies and industrialized nations in the world. Thousands of its people are now dead and thousands more are huddling in their basements afraid of radiation fall out. Just two weeks ago those same people were trucking off to office jobs and worrying about where their next vacation was going to be. Today, the people of Tokyo, arguably one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world, are worried about radiation in their milk and their spinach. I have to wonder if any of those same people are wishing they had asked some different questions.

Meanwhile the media coverage of the goings on in Japan have been as unceasing as they are for all of these types of horrific disasters, there is no less coverage than there was for Haiti, Indonesia or even 9/11, and I know I am not the only one who finds that the excessive media coverage while on one hand making me aware of what is going on makes me feel somewhat detached from the humanity of what is happening, from the safety of my own home and the comfort of my favourite chair it is easy to be removed from the on the ground suffering. The worst is that with each successive disaster we become more and more media saturated and more and more detached from what is actually is happening. It becomes easier and easier to fiddle while the world burns, as we become more and more desensitized and more and more assured that it statistically is unlikely to happen here.

I don't know that Rome is burning around us, I'm not much of a fatalist, and I am more of an optimist than anything, but I do think if we don't start to ask some of the right questions about the world we want to live in, we might find that we don't get the answers we want.