Overview

In a world dominated by a multitude of risks, the discrepancy between calculated and perceived risk represents one of the most fascinating enigmas in cognitive psychology. The traditional assumption, which regards such divergences as manifestations of irrationality or mere biases, proves insufficient to explain their persistence. This volume offers an alternative interpretation, grounded in evolutionary biology and formalized through Bayes' Theorem. The central hypothesis is that the human brain does not evaluate risk in terms of absolute probability, but rather through a heuristic lens calibrated to the potential impact on species survival. Through an analysis that integrates probability, psychology, and evolutionary logic, the book demonstrates how risk perception functions as a sophisticated adaptive strategy. Collective anxiety triggered by rare and catastrophic events, in contrast with the underestimation of statistically more probable dangers, is reinterpreted not as a cognitive error but as the activation of an existential alarm mechanism. This mechanism, forged over millennia of natural selection, assigns a significantly greater heuristic weight to losses that threaten the continuity of the reproductive pool, ensuring an emotional response proportionate to the evolutionary significance of the threat. This study offers a perspective that is, in many respects, revolutionary regarding the nature of heuristics, elevating them from mere deviations from rationality to powerful survival strategies that have allowed our species to thrive and persist into the contemporary era.

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