I really like this. I’m curious, though—to what degree can this be taught/improved? Are there studies on this? I had the impression it was somewhat hopeless, but maybe that’s just my behavioral econ background being dramatic and fatalistic.
Well, Russell believed it could be developed through education. One exercise which can help is comparing an abstract number of people to something that relates to daily experience, such as the number of people in your school or your city.
Here’s a similar scale which was developed to communicate risk values
I really like this. I’m curious, though—to what degree can this be taught/improved? Are there studies on this? I had the impression it was somewhat hopeless, but maybe that’s just my behavioral econ background being dramatic and fatalistic.
Well, Russell believed it could be developed through education. One exercise which can help is comparing an abstract number of people to something that relates to daily experience, such as the number of people in your school or your city.
Here’s a similar scale which was developed to communicate risk values
http://imgur.com/nLXDg1h
The metta training in Buddhism aims at training these skills but I don’t know of any studies as to its effectiveness.