Abortion, Guns and Fear

The meeting began with participants discussing current events. These included the Kansas vote on abortion restriction and the proposed gun legislation in California permitting civil lawsuits against firearm manufacturers for wrongful death.

A discussion of Daniel Kahneman's book " Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow" followed. The discussion focused on perceptions of danger and the tendency when thinking intuitively to consider things dangerous that are not. This led to a discussion of fear as a motivator and the idea of fear yielding good outcomes such as increases in voter registration. Also discussed was a study which concluded that the fear of loss outweighs the fear of gain for most subjects in the study.

The next meeting will be August 19th at 12:00 PM PST with a presentation by Roberta Martinez, author of Latinos in Pasadena. Brian Biery will return on September 16th at 12:00 PM PST to continue discussing Race and History in Pasadena.

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