With our current pandemic related concerns, we seem to have forgotten about other scary things, like terrorism or environmental catastrophe. Should we be concerned by our lack of worry?

We discuss whether we worry about the right things, whether we are worrying less than we used to and whether worry can even be accurately measured. What is the right amount to worry and what is the purpose of worrying? Does it serve a rational function?

Things mentioned in this podcast:

• Personal well-being, according to the ONS
• Ipsos MORI’s ‘issues index’, tracking top concerns over time
• Cognitive economics is a new field that takes the goings on inside of the mind seriously
• System 3: Decision making through imagination
• Help to stop worrying

For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer, for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing why we've stopped worrying about terrorism. Nick, you're not worried about terrorism anymore, no? No, you don't hear

about it anymore. Do you remember when that was a thing? Terrorism. Yeah, for ages people wrote about terrorism and extremism and why this was a big problem and why should we get worried? And apparently it's all pandemics now, all we worry about is the pandemic. Now, so this made me think, well, you know, there's only a certain amount of space on the front page of a newspaper, so something's got to be there and it's going to be the top thing. But it also feels to me like there's a certain amount of time that we have to worry about things as well. And it just made me wonder whether or not- Time or space? Both. Some sort of combination, but basically there's only a certain amount of anxiety which we have. And when some new thing comes along to replace what was there before, it feels like, well, instead of being perhaps more worried, we're just worrying about a different thing. But also, you know, can we actually lessen the amount of things there are to worry about? There'll always be things on the front page. Will there always be things on the front page of our brains that we worry about? Is there some kind of conservation law that means that, you know, our level of anxiety doesn't go down, it just changes into anxiety about different things?

Okay, let's dive straight in. I mean, immediately this makes me think of when I was a kid in the 80s. There were two things I worried about a lot. One was the IRA. It was Northern Ireland, because that was, you know, really in the thick of it back then that was on our TV screens all the time. That was the first thing. The second one was the Cold War. I thought the Soviet Union or nuclear holocaust would sort of kick off at any moment. And I remember, I think it was when there was a plane got shot down over Korea. Does that sound right?

Flight 007, I think.

Yeah. And I was convinced. I think I went to bed crying because I thought, well, this is it.

Yeah.

The world is going to end. But again, maybe something I've talked about war before, which is this sort of baseline of humans will just tend towards a certain level of worrying, worrying anyway. And so I forget what it was. I think it was in a book about experience. I think who are the people who often write those big tomes about the Second World War, those British historians?

Could you, Robert, Conquest, the Antony Beaver?

Antony Beaver, that's what I'm thinking of. I think it was one of his, and if it's not him, it was by an author similar to him, where it drew upon diaries of individuals at the time. And it wrote, and there was a diary of this woman who was besieged in Leningrad, and another woman in sort of suburban Cheshire, let's say. And the one in Cheshire was just going, oh, God, I'm having such a bad war. We just can't get eggs. And, you know, this is I'm having a really tough time here. And the one in Leningrad is saying, well, I haven't eaten for five days and neighbours have eaten their kids. Yeah. And, you know, it's not all bad. Mustn't crumble. But we just kind of revert to kind of a base level of dissatisfaction, no matter what the circumstances are. Peter?

Yeah, I think you've hit the nail on the head. There's some good psychology studies which suggest that people are just have a natural level of unhappiness or happiness, that their circumstances don't affect much. You take them out and put them somewhere else that makes them richer or more famous or whatever, all the things that they wanted. Eventually, once they kind of reach equilibrium again, they're just as unhappy as they were when they started. But anxiety, I think, is considered to be a sort of like a developed world problem. You know, it's probably partly because in parts of the world that don't have good health care, that it's not recorded as much. But you have people who live in the US and UK and Europe who really haven't got very much to worry about. Because if worse comes to worse, the state will provide most of the things you need. So you're not going to starve to death. But people still develop a general anxiety disorder and can't sort of see the wood for the trees. You know, I mean, I can talk with some authority because I have suffered from this and I think it's important that I'm open and transparent What do you mean? Anxiety? Yeah, with anxiety. And I had no reason to be anxious. But you just kind of develop this problem. You can easily develop this problem. But there are treatments out there and ways to help, which is good. But to go back to Nick's point, I think there's certainly like a cap. So there's a cap generally in society. Take any group of people, they've got busy lives, they've got children, they've got work and everything. There is only a certain capacity for cognitive throughput within that group. So you can see that being providing an upper limit on what we have to worry about. So we used to worry about terrorism, and then COVID came along. Now that's been pushed out in favor of COVID. So that would provide a maximum throughput of worry capacity. Whether or not there's an irreducible amount, that's interesting. And I think there probably is, going back to the psychology of unhappiness, that you have a pre-programmed level of happiness or unhappiness, and you will find things to worry about that satisfies that

lower limit. So far, we've gone off in a direction where we're talking about it. And that's because what I said, talking about it on an individual basis. And I guess we could still all individually be worrying about something that's a corporate experience or communal. But yeah, let's sort of

Quick shout out to a previous podcast. I think it was called You've Never Had It So Good.

at the data that it does. So sorry, you're saying there's no correlation between how much people

actually happening. I mean, there could be a few things going on here. It could be I mean, if we talk about crime, for example, it could be talking about what kind of crime, you know, just just say, maybe white collar crime is just going way down. But actually other kinds of crime like mugging, for example, yeah, yeah, yeah. Could be that. Well, that's not true. I mean, the press could

be more than all categories of crime. Okay. Peter, there's an interesting new ish, fairly new discipline, which I'd not heard of previously, called cognitive economics, which might be a set of science which can shed some light on on this. And so traditional economics sounds right up your street, by the way. Yeah. So traditional economics is concerned with modeling the world and assumes that people are sort of maximizing their own utility and I getting the most of that money. Whereas cognitive economics tries to bridge the gap between traditional economics, and its capacity to model and predict what happens in the world with the cognitive side, the psychology of how people actually work. So it brings into into consideration things like, rather than maximizing your overall utility, you're also trying to maximize your happiness, and trying to, but you're not doing so on a long term basis, you're, you're very much kind of in the moment. So it's rather, it's a very local maximization of, of happiness. Most of the time, but said, but provides ways of modeling longer term happiness, in fact, you can imagine what you're, what you're sort of considered what you're, what you'll be like in the future, if you make a certain decision now, which I think this is, this is a very LFE topic, because it's sort of measuring hard things and, and analyzing hard things. But the is, I've not done much reading on it, it's, it's, it's possibly tainted by a lot of the same things that sociology, problems that sociology has that it's difficult to measure, and therefore, sort of somewhat unfalsifiable in many cases. But as a discipline, it introduces an interesting concept that we that kind of aligns with a way that we like to think about the world. So you've heard of system one and system two types of thinking, I think we have covered in the podcast. So system one thinking is your emotional reactive, primeval brain telling you to do certain things. And that's the thing that's, that's me. That's the that's you. Yeah, you you in, in Yeah, I never heard. I know, I can see what's coming with system two, but I'm not gonna. Yes, it's just the one thing that makes you eat the biscuit. Right? Yeah. All right. And hang the consequences. Yeah, system two, system two is the logical part of brain, the reason the part of the brain that allows you to take into account historical data, and all the things you've read and learned. And it's the thing that lets you do maths. It's the thing that sort of is the sort of higher mind and mysteries me this. But yeah, keep going. Yeah. And that's Aleph Insights. So yeah, we are the system to your system. Yeah. But cognitive economics brings in an idea of system three. Oh, okay, which is which is a sort of which is, you could you could think of it as like the emotional decision making, or the imagination decision making, rather. So this is this is you, like decided, do I want to eat this biscuit? System one is saying, Yeah, for God's sake, eat that biscuit, because we've got a must have a biscuit now. System three is allows you to imagine how happy will be if you eat the biscuit, and how happy you'll be in the future if you don't eat the biscuit and you lose a stone. And that that that helps you think about your program. But it's much more emotion is much more sort of imaginary driven than the logic than the sort of if I don't eat this biscuit, then I won't, I won't take on those calories. And I won't get that. Okay. Where does that leave us? Well,

accommodate that. Yeah. We're actually surprisingly close to getting towards the end, not quite there. That being the case, there is a question or two I want to ask. But before I do, anything you

want to pick up? Anything you want to? Just a sort of practical note on how to help manage one's own worrying. Brilliant. So there's a well sort of regarded cognitive behavioral therapy technique for if you think you're suffering from worrying, or if you've been diagnosed as being anxious, something that can help you would might be to schedule your worry time. And that so if you relies on being able to distinguish in your own mind between useful thinking and worrying, thinking is, thinking is a useful process of making progress on a problem through thought. And worrying in this context is not being able to progress things, you're just sort of ruminating and going over. But the sort of slightly counterintuitive method is to set aside 15 minutes to half an hour a day in your diary, dedicated to worry time. And that's when you

can just go nuts and worry about everything that worries you. Do you lie on the floor and shout?

However, whatever technique works for you. The point is, you allow yourself to do it. Yeah. And if you find yourself worrying about something during the day, the trick is to write it down on a piece of paper or in a notebook or in your diary, and park it and say, I'm not gonna worry about that now, I'll do that later. And just the act that post that active process of managing what you're thinking about, really becomes a sort of self reinforcing. And then you find yourself being able to limit the amount of time you're worrying about. Okay, I like that. I like that.

Okay, are we happy for me to go to my questions? Yeah, I suppose. Yeah. I mean,

I think the problem here, though, just to summarize, is that the data tell us quite a messy story. I don't think it's very clear. But I think it's, you know, some big things that we can conclude is that yes, there probably is. Basically, the anxiety is sort of basically fixed. Now, there's evidence that it goes up and down a bit. But the amount it goes up and down is simply not nowhere near big enough to accommodate how much things actually are good or bad. And, you know, we probably expect it to change far more than it does. And, and, you know, it's, it is probably much more a factor of you than it is the things you think you're worried about, in general. So there we are, that will be my conclusion. But yes, I think we can expect people to worry about pandemics for a while. And then and then I think something will come along and we'll forget all

about I'd like, I'd like a global risk register website somewhere that tells me all the base rates of all the bad things that could happen to me, and sort of suggest an allotted amount of time per

day I should spend worrying about. Yeah, I mean, I mean, basically, everyone should spend their time worrying about coronary heart disease. And that's it, really. Yeah, you know, that's because

everything else pales into insignificance. Well, in fact, there you go. Aleph Insights can create that website and everyone go there and put their worries. Yeah, yeah. I've got an idea. I mean, I'm worried about who's gonna pay for it. But let's sort of I want to ask you how much you worry about certain things on a scale of one to 10. Okay. Zero should be not at all. So let's let's. So okay, zero. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let's start off with how much do you worry about your battery running out? Two. Two. Okay. Nick? Well, if it's not running up running out,

not at all. If it's nearly running out, that's quite stressful. If it's totally run out,

that's fine again. Okay, situation. And I'll adjust my score. Yeah, you're going out for the day. Yeah. And you're leaving the house and your phone is charged. At that point. How much do you worry

that your phone will run out by the end of the day? Not zero because I can turn it off when

it's getting low. Yeah, I'd say two. How much do you worry about global pandemics? Nick? Well,

zero. Yeah. Peter? I'd say three or four. Because I think, you know, we've had a big one. And there's a good chance we'll get another one that's more serious. Yeah. For me, I say zero.

Yeah. Right or wrong. That's how much I do worry about. Yeah, that's right. What about being late? How much do you worry about that? If let's say you are late, how worried are you about being late? And let's say it's for something reasonably important. Oh, I hate being late. So I'd say

I'd say six because most people are pretty forgiving, but I don't like it. Yeah, that's one

of the most stressful situations I can be in. Can't stand it. Seven, eight. I'm super paranoid. I can always turn up at airports like two hours before I need to and stuff. So I'm that horrible mixture

where I do worry about it a lot, but I do nothing to mitigate it. Yeah. So mine's about a five or a six or up to an eight. Only a couple more. Climate change. Nick? I think I can get very

stressed about it sometimes when you read a story like all of the insects are dying or the great coral reef has been bleached and you sort of think, oh God, it's like the world is closing in on you and being destroyed before your very eyes. But most of the time, honestly, it's sort of more or less a zero or a one, but with sort of occasional peaks up to sort of seven or eight.

Okay. Peter? I'd say there's a background level constantly worried about it to about a two, but we have to say that sort of thing because we live in North London.

Yeah. You should be saying like eight or nine. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think it's one of those things that veers between zero and 10, but I think it's just that helplessness of it as well. Right. Yeah. Do you want one more? Do you want one more? Yeah, go on. Is it saying

the wrong thing on Twitter? Because I think that's something which is scary.

Stay away from Twitter. Well, yeah. So yeah. What about your kids? You're about to have a kid.

How much do you worry about your kids? That's definitely, that's high. That constant, constant kind of at least a five peaking to sort of nine when I can't see one of them.

None at the moment because it all feels completely unreal. Okay. What about, but you can combine these. How about your kid? You can't see your kid, but they're late and you've not heard from them and they're going to London and there's been a terrorist attack and your phone's run out. I mean. Oh, that's 11, 11 out of 10. And it's hotter today than it really should be. Yeah. All right. I don't know if that led us anywhere, but I'm sure like the big one there we should all be worried about is probably climate change. I don't know. Or maybe we should just be worried on our grandkids.

Yeah. But I think as we've discussed, you know, what you, what we do worry about and what we should worry about probably diverge quite considerably. Exactly. Exactly. All right.

Okay. Thank you as always for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights. Until next time. Goodbye.