RISK

JOHN F. ROSS

It’s all around us, but we have rational choices to make

Whizzing across town in our car or jetting across the continent, the miles racing by, it’s easy to appreciate how these two inventions have changed how we live. So, too, the telephone, concrete and steel, the radio, and the computer. It is more difficult to measure the impact of the nonmaterial, intellectual revolutions in science over the past several centuries: the heretical insights of Copernicus that shifted Earth from the center of the universe to a mere planet orbiting only one among countless suns; Darwin’s theory of natural selection; and the subatomic world described by quantum mechanics.

One little-heralded revolution in science and mathematics begun in the 17th century, however, has changed the dynamics of our daily lives even more profoundly. When an eccentric Frenchman by the name of Blaise Pascal fiddled around with some simple but startling observations that would eventually become probability theory, it was like letting the proverbial genie out of the bottle. Probability theory, and discoveries following it, changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision making, and an individual’s ability to influence the course of future events. While this revolution has contributed to most of the marvels of the modern age, it has also introduced a host of new challenges and incumbent dangers that have infected modern life with alienation, confusion, and, at times, even paralysis.

Pascal’s insights into probability came about because a man brought him a puzzle. The Chevalier de Mere dabbled in mathematics, mostly putting his hunches to work in the gambling parlors of Paris. It was his love of games of chance that prompted him to bring a two-centuries-old brainteaser to Pascal, who in turn conferred with mathematician Pierre de Fermat, he of “last theorem” fame.

The “problem of the points” involves two players who are in the midst of a series of dice games, winner take all. One is winning, but the match is broken off before it’s finished. How do the players equitably split the prize money? Pascal dismissed the solution calling for an even split of the purse because it did not adequately reward the person who was ahead. Nor would giving all the money to the person ahead adequately acknowledge the possibility that, should the series be completed, the losing player could come from behind and win. Pascal realized that the answer lay in determining each player’s odds of winning, and turned to a device already in use: numbers arranged into tables according to the mathematician’s purpose. Pascal’s arrangement forms a triangle, now named for him. With it, one can calculate the odds one has of winning the series at any point during the contest.

The beauty of Pascal’s achievement lies in its recognition that mathematical principle, not just the bettor’s hunch, can be applied to figuring out the odds in a game of chance. Here was the very idea of probability: establishing the numerical odds of a future event with mathematical precision. Remarkably, no one else had cracked probability before, although the Greeks and Romans came close.

By all accounts, Pascal was an odd fellow. He spent much of his short adult life torn between his love of mathematics and science and the world of the ultra-strict Jansenists, a fundamentalist Catholic sect. The year 1654 proved pivotal for Pascal. Poor health, bouts with depression, and a series of disappointments left him increasingly frustrated with secular life. One day, at Neuilly, his team of horses bolted while crossing a bridge. The force and suddenness of the movement broke the traces, and the horses plunged over the edge of the bridge. A breathless Pascal sat immobile on his now horseless carriage, which remained atop the bridge. The frail genius attributed his miraculous escape from death to divine intervention, and saw it as a sign that he should embrace religion. He sold his possessions and, at 31, moved to the monastery at Port-Royal-des-Champs, near Paris, to take up the Jansenist life.

Before he died eight years later, Pascal went on to publish several important religious treatises. But what attracts our attention today are two pieces of paper, each covered front and back with handwriting scribbled in all directions. He took the same principles of probable outcomes he had worked out with Fermat for the dice games and applied them to an entirely different matter.

He asked: “God is, or he is not. Which way should we incline?” Reason, Pascal knew, could never establish definitively whether God exists. Pascal deduced, however, that the act of believing in God could have two outcomes, depending on whether God exists. If God does not exist, nothing will happen to the believer. If God does exist, the believer will be blessed with eternal salvation. The nonbeliever also faces two possible outcomes. If God doesn’t exist, he will suffer no consequences. If God does exist, the nonbeliever will face eternal damnation. The nonbeliever faces either no consequences or hell; the believer looks at no consequences or heaven. Faced with heaven or hell, Pascal reasoned, it makes sense to open oneself to faith.

Later philosophers have criticized the wager for both its premises and its cynicism, but Pascal’s logic remains solid. While gamblers of all eras have picked up much about basic probabilities from experience and intuition, the power of Pascal’s new theory took the understanding of odds a major leap forward. Importantly, Pascal also took the grand leap of applying this logic to situations outside of gaming. This work would become the basis for decision theory, defined by historian Ian Hacking as the “theory of deciding what to do when it’s not certain what will happen.” Pascal’s Wager is the very essence of modern-day risk analysis and management: evaluate the consequences of individual and group actions; measure them; and, in turn, make better decisions.

Other thinkers took Pascal’s work and developed more tools with probability, from discovering correlation and regression to sampling and the bell curve. His theory of probability enriched a civilization exploding with new information about the way the world worked. During the Renaissance, revolutions in science, religion, and political theory, and the emergence of democratic institutions freed individuals to think about themselves as free-acting entities, capable of exercising control over their futures. Science began to reveal that events and conditions once attributed to the gods or magic were caused in fact by tangible natural forces and substances, or by chance, in a quantifiable way.

Probability, it now appeared, was woven into the fabric of the universe. Freed from the yoke of a deterministic worldview, humans could take bold steps to vanquish hazards that had long plagued them. With these new perspectives and a growing arsenal of tools, human beings took great strides toward controlling and manipulating the future in the form of risk-management strategies. By understanding the likelihood of an event’s future occurrence, scientists began to examine the shape of the future itself, the closest thing to looking into a crystal ball that mankind is ever likely to have. In some form, probability and statistics have played a critical role in all the advances that have brought us longer lives, better standards of living, and less vulnerability to the ravages of nature. They remain among the most powerful intellectual tools that humankind has ever invented.

The ability to describe the probability of some future event with numbers—a percentage, for instance, as in “a 40 percent chance of rain”—makes it possible to compare with accuracy the severity or frequency of one risk with another. If the expression of risk could be defined in the universal language of numbers, then a person could compare the annual chances in the United States of being killed by shark attack (1 in 2,720,000) versus the odds of being struck by lightning (1 in 5,787,000). In fact, just about any potential risk could be compared with another if enough data were available. Using vast archives of stored data about past events, a person with a calculator and rudimentary math skills can calculate the odds of virtually anything happening to them in the future.

IT’S A DANGEROUS WORLD OUT THERE

It’s odd to think that the musings of a half-mad, brilliant monk 300 years ago would eventually cause me to lie in my bed one morning worrying about whether I should get out of bed. As I lay there on a particularly gloomy morning, my personal risks for the new day spread out before me like a medieval gauntlet with no end in sight. First thing every morning, I usually turn on the old green metal standing lamp that once belonged to my wife’s grandmother. From my reading over the last few months, I recall that each year at least 60 Americans electrocute themselves on domestic wiring and appliances. I calculate my odds over a year as 1 in four million.

My trip to the bathroom, half-asleep, holds risks, too. Each year, nearly two million Americans hurt themselves badly from slipping and falling in the home. All told, 8,500 people die from these falls. I compute my personal risk of dying from a fall as about 1 in 30,000, although my actual chances are less because I’m under 70 and healthy. If I make it safely to the bathroom, I know from my readings that I must approach the toilet and sink warily. They injure more than 60,000 Americans every year (my odds: about 1 in 4,500). The shower claims another nearly 170,000 injuries every year, while shaving hurts another 40,000. I stand a 1 in 7,000 chance of cutting myself badly enough with my razor this year to seek medical attention. And, if I cut myself slightly, I can’t afford to become angry. Some studies suggest that the act of getting mad increases my chances of having a heart attack.

Even the act of getting dressed places me at risk. Zippers, buttons, and other articles of clothing hurt more than 140,000 Americans each year. Jewelry sends some 55,000 to the doctor or clinic. When I open my wallet and count my change, I’m reminded that half of the paper currency and coinage in our pockets carry infectious germs. According to National Safety Council statistics for 1996, I have a 1 in 36 chance of becoming disabled for a day or more by an unintentional injury sustained at home.

These thoughts were enough to convince me that maybe it is safer to stay in bed than get up. But then other risk facts pop into my slowly awakening consciousness. Literally, lying in bed is risky. The headboard could collapse, or I could fall out of bed. Each year, beds, mattresses, and pillows injure more than 400,000 Americans. Also, sociologists have compiled risk information indicating that unemployment— what I face if I stay in bed—is bad for my health, placing me at higher risk for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart problems, and more. Another couple of minutes in bed surely wouldn’t hurt, I rationalize. My thoughts of an amorous interlude with my wife bring to mind a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Passing from a relaxed state quickly to the strenuous exertion of passion can shock my body, raising my chances of a myocardial infarction to one in a million.

WEIGHING OUR CHANCES

This outlook on my morning may seem paranoid. Indeed, it probably arises from reading too many risk statistics. However, the fact that I can examine my morning ablutions so completely in the guise of risk is something new in human history. What’s unusual is that I’m able to quantify the concern I have about my health and mortality. We’ve always lived in an uncertain world, but it’s a new twist to view uncertainty and the hazards it contains in a sturdy, numerical context. A single fact, such as the risk of cutting myself shaving, means little on its own. Taken altogether, however, the risk estimates, comparisons, and statistics now available force us to look at our world with new eyes. The risk information in numerical form or couched in the specific lingo of probability—weather forecasts of rain squalls, a new health study reporting the correlation between indoor pollution and cancer, or the dangers of a particular stock portfolio—are the manifestation of a revolutionary change in how we think about uncertainty and risk.

All the intellectual tools of probability theory lead us to one deceptively simple but quite profound revelation: any activity, product, food, or event involves risk on some level or another. Every decision we make holds consequences: cross at the light or jaywalk; eat a healthy lunch or hamburger; invest in the stock market or bonds. The work of Pascal and others that followed in his footsteps gives us today the possibility of seeing the world in terms of the rich range of consequences—and delivers the tools with which to evaluate them.

The average American is only just beginning to recognize and understand the way in which we have begun to think about risk. Consider a few examples just in the arena of personal health. Risks can result from action (from shaving to driving to hang-gliding) or occur passively (from breathing polluted air, exposure to radon, the occurrence of a genetic disease, getting randomly hit by lightning). The expression of risk can be immediate— driving along in a car and suddenly an accident occurs—or it can be a hazard that takes years to play out—melanoma caused by exposure to the sun that turns deadly after several decades.

Risks exist when an individual performs an action or if he doesn’t. A sick man can heed his doctor’s advice to get a chest x-ray. The patient incurs risk when he cooperates with the doctor (the drive to the office, the additional x-rays from the diagnostic test) or if he doesn’t (the condition could get worse, become untreatable, and threaten his life). There are direct health risks (smoking cigarettes), more indirect but still serious “risk factors” (high blood pressure), and a range of risk correlations (cancer from mobile cellphone use). Negotiating this risk environment is daunting, indeed.

On the societal and world stage, even more confounding new orders of risk confront us. The catastrophic events of September 11th proved a grim reminder that America is not immune to acts of international terrorism on our own shores. In retrospect, most of us never considered that such an attack was possible, much the less probable. Our world will never again look the same because we now must factor despicable acts of terrorism into our risk equations as a nation.

At the same time, we reel personally from these events, and the vast majority of us, perhaps, are not yet able to weigh the risks of air travel or even working in a tall building. Our risk landscape has changed forever. School shootings and global warming all represent new types of risks we must wrestle with at some level or another. And how do we respond to low probability/ high consequence risks? Astrophysicists, for instance, have shown there’s a small possibility that the path of a large asteroid or meteor may intersect Earth’s orbit.

The good news is that Pascal begat a world today where individuals in the United States can wield more power over their futures than ever before. At the same time, we are forced to make complex and difficult risk decisions that can lead to feelings of disorientation and confusion. It’s the latter—the confusion we feel, for instance, when we hear conflicting health advice in the media—of which we must beware, because in confusion we as individuals are prey to paranoia, hysteria, and manipulation by special interest groups, and may inadvertently cede our decision making to others.

As my paranoid musings in bed suggest, our growing awareness of the risks around us—many of which have always been there—can make us feel vulnerable. When we hear of a new exotic risk, we may react too strongly, failing to examine the severity of this risk with other risks in our lives. Thus, after an accidental death in a subway escalator, public outrage demands multi-million dollar safeguards. Yet other urban problems, such as lead poisoning in children, remain far more destructive but don’t awaken a universal chorus for immediate corrective action.

The fusillade of risk statistics and information we hear daily in newspapers and magazines, and on the radio and television, can lead to feelings of impotence. Ordinary citizens may be tempted to throw up their hands and dismiss much of modern science. Some may decide to embrace a different belief system other than modern science that somehow appears more humane to them.

MAKING THE RIGHT CHOICES

On a recent radio interview program, one caller asked me if she could use risk analysis to evaluate whether she should marry her boyfriend. She began to elaborate about her relationship. I admit to being taken aback by this apparently sincere question. Ultimately, probability theory and the fruit of risk analysis are only tools. Unto themselves, they can’t lead us to some absolute, right answer in any matter, be it how to choose in love, whether to build a highway, or to smoke cigarettes. It is up to us as individuals, and collectively as a culture, to make the judgements about what we will and will not tolerate. Thinking in terms of risk and probability simply gives us more information with which to make better decisions—choices that will bring us closer to what we ultimately desire.

As experts, we must be careful not to ask citizens to cede the important decisions they face. Nor must we, as individuals, give away to others our right to make decisions. Should that woman on the radio show be told how to love? Should a health care provider make critical decisions without the input of the patient? Certainly not. Not including the individual in the decision-making process can only lead to alienation, a lack of ownership, and more lawsuits when things go wrong.

Nor must we always take the safest path. We may choose to do risky things because the possible benefits are high. Manned space flight, for instance, holds great risks in terms of money and the possibility of loss of life, but these risks may be deemed worth it. The exhilaration of downhill skiing for an individual may offset the risk of breaking a limb. Chasing zero risk has risks of its own. Instead, we must embrace the idea of relative risk, the notion that everything contains some element of risk and we must choose our paths judiciously.

If we fail to understand where these innovations in risk and probability occur, then we may become slaves to them as opposed to using them as powerful tools, and thus not take advantage of the remarkable revolution that Blaise Pascal started three centuries ago.

John F. Ross (CC ’00) is a senior editor at Smithsonian Magazine. He is the author of The Polar Bear Strategy: Reflections on Risk in Modern Life.

Return to COSMOS 2001 Table of Contents
Return to COSMOS Journals
Return to COSMOS Home Page