A recent pop-science article in the NYT says “debate
continues on hazards of electromagnetic waves.” It points out that the first
disturbing findings date back half a century, and it has been more recently
established that kids living near high-voltage power lines have measurably
higher rates of leukemia. There have also been some sporadic, potentially
disturbing finding regarding cell phones and other equipment. So why hasn’t
this become a burning public health concern? I would guess it’s the same reason
which recently led a top military commander to testify to a US senate committee
that things in Afghanistan were really, truly looking up, despite some apparent
evidence to the contrary – chronic optimism, or what some psychologists call “positivity
bias.” This is the mindset which can lead you to conquer the Aztec empire with a
company of desperados, land a few men on the moon, and win some hot and a cold
war. I would guess it can also lead you into Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, and
let you maintain confidence in a virtualized financial matrix (or, dare I say, fly a passenger airliner over a war zone).
In fact, there is some research indicating that
individuals with a “negativity bias” (which probably has some
genetic/epigenetic basis) have a more accurate assessment of their own traits
and abilities, and of the overall context in which they operate. In the real
world, though, these are predispositions more common in Japan than in Denmark
(the most upbeat country according to most surveys) – and it is Japan that has
been in the economic doldrums for a long, long time now (and a Japanese company
did show misplaced optimism in managing the Fukushima power plant and organizing
the post-disaster efforts there). So who knows, perhaps we are destined to make
the mistakes we are predisposed to make, and there is some truth in the
fatalistic wisdom typical of most traditional cultures. But such a conclusion
would probably betray an overly strong “negativity bias” in my own thinking (the
default inclination among the pre-Millennial generations in my native Bulgaria –
which The Economist crowned a few
years ago the unhappiest place on Earth, and which hasn’t really benefited from
habitually seeing the glass half-empty). So we are back to square one…
