Podcast Summary: "What is a Rational Response to Catastrophic Risk?"

Podcast: LSE: Public lectures and events
Host: LSE Film and Audio Team
Speaker: Evelyn Fox Keller, Professor Emeritus, MIT
Date: March 8, 2012

Overview

This episode features a thought-provoking lecture by Evelyn Fox Keller on the complexities of risk perception, specifically with regard to catastrophic risks such as climate change and terrorism. Keller explores whether our traditional analytic tools—especially rational choice and cost-benefit analysis—are sufficient for dealing with low-probability, high-impact events, or if heuristics (including fear and emotion) may constitute a more rational response in some circumstances. The episode also includes an engaging Q&A that further interrogates the boundaries between rational analysis, heuristics, and moral responsibility.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Human Responses to Catastrophic Risk

[01:23]

• Research shows humans systematically misestimate risks—overestimating evocative threats, underestimating others.

• Most do not calculate risk probabilistically; instead, we use shortcuts/heuristics like the availability heuristic (judging probability by how easily examples come to mind).

• Cass Sunstein (legal scholar) argues that public fear and availability heuristics drive policy toward worst-case responses, even when probability is low.

  “People tend to focus on the adverse outcome and not on its likelihood.” — Keller, quoting Sunstein [03:30]

• Sunstein argues that regulation should be based on expert judgment, not public sentiment.

2. Emotion vs. Analytic Reasoning in Risk Perception

[05:00–10:00]

• The lay-expert risk gap is often attributed to two “evolved” systems: an experiential, affect-driven, rapid one (for laypeople) vs. a deliberative, analytic, slow, and “rational” one (used by experts).

• Psychologist Paul Slovic argues for the usefulness of affect, especially in complex, uncertain environments.

  “Reliance on affect and emotion is a quicker, easier, and more efficient way to navigate in a complex, uncertain, and sometimes dangerous world.” — Keller, quoting Slovic [06:55]

• Fear (“dread factor”) is crucial but double-edged—it can motivate action or paralyze and distort analysis.

3. The Precautionary Principle and Political Abuse of Fear

[13:00]

• Using fear for political ends (e.g., “1% Doctrine” after 9/11) leads to aggressive, arguably irrational responses.

• Sunstein notes that both terrorism and climate change confront the same dilemma: How do we respond rationally to catastrophic but unlikely risks?

• The precautionary principle (act aggressively to prevent low-probability, high-impact disasters) gets critiqued for being paralyzing (forbidding action since all regulation contains some risk).

  “The real problem... is that the precautionary principle offers no real guidance... it forbids all courses of action, including regulation, because every possible action... risks doing harm to someone.” — Keller, on Sunstein [20:20]

4. Bounded and Ecological Rationality

[26:00]

• Herbert Simon's bounded rationality: Humans’ rationality is limited by computational capacities and information, but is adapted to real environments.

• Gerd Gigerenzer’s ecological rationality: Heuristics (like the gaze heuristic for catching a ball) are sometimes superior to computation—they don't optimize, but adapt to the environment.

  “Gut feelings provide a basis for action that... can sometimes even be superior [to computation].” — Keller, paraphrasing Gigerenzer [31:00]

• The gaze heuristic illustration: Catching a ball does not require calculating its trajectory; a simple rule suffices.

5. Problems with Cost-Benefit Analysis for Catastrophic Risks

[36:00–44:00]

• Discount rate controversy: Stern Review on climate change (2006) advocates a low discount rate (valuing future lives), which US economists criticize as too ethical and not market-based.

• Tail risk and structural uncertainty: Catastrophic events have impacts that are both hard to predict and severely underestimated by cost-benefit analysis, which often ignores fat-tail probability distributions.

• Economist Martin Weitzman: Conventional analyses “must be treated with extreme skepticism” when they ignore the possibility of outlier, catastrophic events.

  “What is normally taken as providing the basis for rational decision making, namely cost benefit analysis... is itself deeply problematic.” — Keller [45:00]

6. Could Heuristics Outperform Expert Analysis?

[45:00–47:00]

• Keller and others suggest that heuristics, such as attention to dread risk, may sometimes more reliably guide action than formal analysis, especially given how poorly experts estimate extreme risks.
• This could be reframed as affective rationality—using emotionally-informed signals as “rules of thumb” in the face of uncertainty.

7. The Belief-Action Gap and Emotional Engagement

[47:00–50:00]

• Widespread belief in threats like climate change doesn’t translate to action; psychologists suggest this is due to lack of emotional engagement (affect).

• Analytic and affective systems must interact; without affect, rational analysis fails to motivate.

  “Emotions are rational because they enable us to act, especially under conditions where rational analysis... fails or is inconclusive.” — Keller [50:00]

• However, fear is complex: it can motivate or paralyze; its role needs to be carefully considered.

8. Ethics, Fear as a Heuristic, and Responsibility for the Future

[53:00–60:00]

• Philosophers like Hans Jonas argue for a “heuristics of fear”—that moral philosophy must heed what we fear in order to learn what we value, especially in the face of unprecedented threats.

  “We must educate our soul to a willingness to let itself be affected by the mere thought of possible calamities to future generations... that requires a new kind of sentimental education.” — Hans Jonas, via Keller [58:00]

• Keller argues economic rationality’s limitations in guiding policy under extreme uncertainty have public policy ramifications, and economists’ tools should be held to the same scrutiny as climate science.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Human Limits:

  “Human rational behavior is shaped by a scissors whose two blades are the structure of the task environment and the computational capabilities of the actor.” — Keller, quoting Herbert Simon [27:30]

• On Economic Analysis:

  “Quite simply, it doesn’t pass the acid test of positive net benefit. Economic analyses have an enormous influence on public policy. And if the assumptions... are faulty, we all bear the consequences.” — Keller [61:00]

• On the Role of Fear:

  “If conventional decision theory has routinely undervalued the risk of catastrophic events... might not fear also be viewed, at least in this particular case, as compensating for the underestimates common to expert reasoning?” — Keller [62:00]

• On Educating Emotion:

  “Developing an attitude open to the stirrings of fear in the face of merely conjectural and distant forecasts concerning man’s destiny... requires a new kind of sentimental education.” — Hans Jonas via Keller [58:00]

Q&A Highlights

Limits and Calibration of Heuristics

[47:34, 52:22]

• Richard Bradley and Christian List press Keller: Is there evidence that heuristics outperform expected utility when we don’t know what success is?
• Keller: Standard methods systematically cut off tail risks, underestimating catastrophic risks; heuristics may compensate for skewness and underestimation, but the suggestion remains tentative.

Heuristics, Moral Values, and Emotional Distance

[62:26–65:53]

• Alex Voover and others argue human fear is weak for distant harms (like future generations and climate), so education and “concern” may be more actionable than fear.
• Keller: Jonas’s argument is precisely about that gap—moral education must precede or accompany risk calculations.

Heuristics vs. Formal Analysis

[68:53–70:42]

• Luke Bovens: Sometimes fear is helpful, but often it distorts (e.g., post-9/11 increase in car accidents).
• Keller: The formal economic analysis underestimates extreme events; if fear is inadequate, what alternative can fill the tool gap for extreme risk estimation?

Diverse Heuristics & Context

[81:27]

• Elsa Lanking: Other heuristics (e.g., “don’t mess with nature”) might serve as caution in the absence of evidence; perhaps fear is one corrective but not the only one.

Closing Reflections

[86:59]

• Keller suggests that informed citizens, if included in policy assessment alongside experts, might shift the balance and acceptance of precautionary climate action.

  “Introduce critics of economic rationality, psychologists interested in the role of emotion, resurrect Hans Jonas... I think the acceptance of the Stern Report would go up dramatically.” — Keller [87:58]

Timestamps Guide

• [01:23] Human misestimation of risk and heuristics
• [05:00–10:00] Emotion, affect and the expert-layperson gap
• [13:00] Political uses of fear and the precautionary principle
• [26:00–31:00] Bounded, ecological rationality and Gigerenzer’s gaze heuristic
• [36:00–44:00] Critiques of cost-benefit analysis and discount rates
• [45:00–47:00] Can heuristics be more rational than analysis?
• [47:00–50:00] Belief-action gap and affective engagement
• [53:00–60:00] Ethics, heuristics of fear, and Hans Jonas
• [61:00] Policy implications and scrutiny of economic reasoning
• [62:00–70:00+] Q&A: Heuristics, fear, emotion, and moral education
• [87:58] Final prediction and wrap-up

Conclusion

Evelyn Fox Keller’s lecture challenges the audience to reconsider what counts as “rational” in confronting catastrophic risks. She suggests that our existing analytic models may be systematically inadequate for such problems and that both affective heuristics (like fear) and moral education could offer necessary correctives or complements—even if they are imperfect, complex, and sometimes dangerous in their own ways. The rich discussion illuminates enduring questions at the intersection of science, psychology, philosophy, and public policy.