Soooooo......

[Alex]

So...a lot of people really have no concept of how to assess risks, especially relative to other risks.

I shouldn't be, but I continue to be amazed by how many people decide to be scared of something that doubles your risk of some horrible outcome without first asking what the baseline level of risk was.

If some action increases my risk of dying during the thirty seconds I'm performing that act from 1 in 1,000,000,000 to 1 in 500,000,000 I'm still not really going to be worried about it.

Inspired by two instances (one work, one online) in which people made sweeping pronouncements about how people should behave based on absolutely no sense of the actual risk. "Someone experienced a bad outcome" says absolutely nothing about risk beyond "the risk is probably non-zero."

ETA: Oh, and yes, my view on what constitutes acceptable risk may change if I had children (though hopefully not to the silly "any non-zero risk is unacceptable" standard I see wielded by parents whenever they disapprove of a risk but ignored when they approve of it) but that wouldn't change the validity of the assessment of actual risk. Joining in irrationality does not make it less irrational.

[Moonliner]

Originally Posted by Alex

So...a lot of people really have no concept of how to assess risks, especially relative to other risks.

It's what keeps the TSA, Homeland Defense and NSA in business.

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by Moonliner

It's what keeps the TSA, Homeland Defense and NSA in business.

As well as hospitals, chiropractors, and florists.