[avip]

I’m hereby inventing a new rule called Chesterton’s Wild Boar fence, the essence of which is people who don’t have gardens, or don’t hang out at night, would always complain about wild boar fences, as they lack any awareness of the beast and its damage, or they downright believe its mere existence is a myth.

[GauntletWizard]

I second this notion. I've been using sharks as an example: Sharks aren't dangerous when swimming, because we don't swim in deep water, because sharks are dangerous. Shark attacks in deep water beaches are fatal at roughly the same rate as riding a bike without a helmet. [1]

The risk of sharks is tempered by our experience with them. Few people swim in deep water beaches (because they have signs saying "Danger! Sharks!") And those that do typically take appropriate precautions and maintain awareness.

Sharks don't want to eat you and do quickly let go of swimmers they attack, but that's irrelevant because the damage has already been done. When I was young, a large amount of education was put into stating that shark attacks were rare, and it's true both in absolute numbers and by comparison with how feared they are. Jaws and knockoffs spread irrational fear in the 70s/80s, and my early 90s childhood came with the counterpressue there, but that counterpressue caused many in my peer group to misunderstand the risks. Shark attacks drop off hard to zero if you're swimming in shallow water. Even at 10 meters, which is not uncommon for surfers, they are a real risk. But surfers spend little time at 10 meters out. All of this forms a balance.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3941575/

[nrb]

I think this can be summed up with a single word: incomprehension. Or in the latter example: ignorance

[dredmorbius]

I've been toying with this idea under the general rubric of "manifestation", that is, the distinction in understanding of things which one has experienced manifestly -- directly -- and those one has not.

This covers any number of circumstances -- why travel is broadening, why rare / degenerative / mental health conditions are so frustrating to explain to healthcare providers / family / others, trying to communicate specialised knowledge, historical bias, what the old know that the young do not (and rarely, vice versa). Tacit vs. explicit knowledge. Theory vs. experience.

There's probably far better existing terminology than what I've come up with (Hume, Kant, and Berkeley address this, as does Plato, within philosophy). But it's also a major concern in a highly diverse yet tightly interconnected world.