Evaluating risks in our life is something we all have to do, but aren’t very good at.
The human brain is just not set up to understand risks.
People can’t intuitively grasp the difference between a 1/10,000 chance and a 1/Billion chance.
We base decisions around fear of the lurid and strange, even when they’re incredibly unlikely, such as shark attacks, plane crashes, and children getting abducted by strangers.
We often fear even things that have literally never happened, such as Halloween candy with poison/razor blades in it, or Satanic ritual abuse. (Though people have had their lives destroyed over false accusations of Satanic abuse.)
Meanwhile we have no fear of mundane things that are much more dangerous, such as ladders, swimming pools, or the deadliest item we encounter in our lives, cars.
This gets even harder when we have major life decisions that center around unknowable risks. We don’t know how to evaluate them.… Read more