The Risks of The Everyday - with Jared Diamond

Pullitzer Prize-winner Jared Diamond discusses how insights from the lifestyles of far-removed cultures can impact the way we think about our own lives. Is it worth worrying about the risk of everyday actions like falling in the shower or tripping on the street? Each time you do these things, the risk of mishap is low, but we do them every single day. Over time, does that mean these tiny risks accumulate to become almost inevitable?

This animation was produced by Andrew Khosravani, thanks to generous support from the Sfumato Foundation.

[ThePoptartster]

The animation is stunning. I wish the video had been longer.

[brettnemecek]

Jared is one of my favorite authors and I'm currently reading this book (in fact I'm currently reading this same chapter!)

[cocoarecords]

awesome video with stunning animation work

[MarinusMakesStuff]

Beautiful video. However, what does this story have to do with science? You can't just smear out statistics over 'everybody'. I'm 31 and I for example, never fell down while under the shower. It all depends on so many variables, it's just nuts to keep everything in mind. I compare the Papua view with religion. It's fine that people live in fear of stuff, but I'm not part of it. Besides this, the video is one of the most beautiful animations I've seen in a long time, and for that, I thank you! :)

[el.joaco.cuevas]

The risk is not that a piano could fall over you in the street. Jared is reffering to the sensitivity towards the little things we do every day that put us in risk, like eating junk food or using dispossable plastic

[flyod]

On a long enough time line, everybody's survival rate drops to zero.  -Fight Club

[pbp]

Any backpacker in his own country could have taught the same lesson. P.S., Even just one dead branch falling could be fatal, never mind the whole tree.

[MozartJunior]

Clearly he never studied Probability Theory

[AttilaAsztalos]

...except I'm not aware of *anything* we do daily-ish that would have a 1/1000 risk of *serious* consequences. Mostly because if there would be something like that we would be acutely aware it's likely to get us about every three years and WE WOULDN'T BE DOING IT (or rather more likely we would do something to mitigate the risk to a much less likely value). Obviously, if the risk is something like instead the numbers change and we just hope not to be unlucky. For this video to apply to you in any significant way, you need to be a BASE jumper at the very least...!

[jimidybobidybo]

How has this video got 50 likes and 3 dislikes yet only 31 views?

[riggersHDFTW]

Not correct because after 1 day passes the chance of dying doesn't get mor likely up until it's certain its stays at 1/1000 therefore after 1000 days chance of you being dead would be 1/1000 * 1000 or is this not correct???

[ReevansElectro]

Having read two of Jared's books, I realize that he has a point but his points are biased and are just opinions and not based in science or mathematics. Generally, in my opinion, he is nearly clueless.

[dutchjay]

and 1/1000 x 1000 = What? pray tell = 1 meaning its a certainty 100% LMFAO, though even that calculation presumes a certain model, there are several other models that could be less than 1 over 1000 days and indeed even the FACT may be that does NOT eventuate just as the prob of a heads on a coin toss is 1/2 does NOT guarantee that in 2 tosses you will get a heads NOT that you may very unlikely though toss a coin say 1000 times and NOT get a heads very unlikely but NOT impossible...got study Probablilty Theory more just as the Video author did not....LOL...ie with replacement style model, eg a new tree grows every day for the one dead tree that falls the prob on ANY day including a TOTAl of 1000 days may STILL BE 1/1000.... etc etc ^^