That Daily Shower Can Be a Killer
5th February 2013
Jared Diamond rounds up the Usual Suspects.
I now think of New Guineans’ hypervigilant attitude toward repeated low risks as “constructive paranoia”: a seeming paranoia that actually makes good sense. Now that I’ve adopted that attitude, it exasperates many of my American and European friends. But three of them who practice constructive paranoia themselves — a pilot of small planes, a river-raft guide and a London bobby who patrols the streets unarmed — learned the attitude, as I did, by witnessing the deaths of careless people.
Like avoiding groups of black males on the street. Just ask John Derbyshire what that advice is worth.