Some interesting logic by Bruce Schneier.

Consider, for example, the risk faced by a lost child. Schneier says the safest strategy is for the child to pick out the nearest nice-looking stranger and ask for help.

That’s the math part. By making the kid choose the stranger, and not the other way around, Schneier says the odds are that the child will pick someone who will help him. If he waits for an adult to help him, he’s increased the odds that the adult is a predator who has targeted him.

“When was the last time you talked to a stranger and got mugged by him?” he asked rhetorically. “People are basically good. If that were not true, society would have fallen apart a long time ago.”

Besides, he says, kids have good people instincts.

Schneier says that most people have a pathology about risk that prevents them from dealing with security threats rationally.