How Should We Think Rationally about Fear?

Crimes identified as "terror" attacks inspire panic. Does that distract our attention from thinking rationally about what's really dangerous and what's not?

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Immediately after 14 people were shot to death at a Christmas party last month in San Bernardino, attention focused on gun control. When the religious extremism of the killers was revealed, "the anxiety level skyrocketed [even though]…nothing had changed about the substance of the crime." That's according to Lawrence M. Krauss, in the New Yorker magazine. Krauss read about the crime and the changing reaction while he was on a cruise to the Antarctic. He's a physicist and director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University.