[fractionalhare]

If your decision substantially involves or derives from making an estimate about a population based on a sample, it is statistics. "Making decisions under uncertainty" is well-studied in statistical literature, just like "quantifying uncertainty" is well-studied. It sounds like you think the latter is "actual statistics", but these things are both statistics.

In particular:

> But if the market crashes, and very badly, how might that affect my life? To make a good decision I would need to think of all the things that come with a market crash (job loss, savings loss). This is not statistics.

This is all statistics, not just the part where you're forecasting likelihood of the market crashing. The reason is because making decisions about the future under the constraints of uncertainty implicitly involves a forecast. When you decide how to diversify your personal investment portfolio, how much to allocate to your Roth versus traditional IRA or 401k, etc, you are making forecasts about which allocation will provide you with a more favorable outcome.

Stated more concisely: there is no rational reason to use statistics for forecasting market events but not for deciding what to do in the event specific market events occur.