[superb-owl]

As with most cognitive biases, there's an inverse to this, where we ignore low-probability high-impact scenarios. E.g. people drive drunk or without a seatbelt, because it'll *probably* be fine. And they repeatedly have that assumption confirmed--until one day it isn't.

I had one friend who would leave his bike chained partially blocking a fire exit, because "what are the odds the fire inspector will come today?" But the fire inspector comes once a year, and if your bike is chained there 99% of the time, odds are you're going to get a fine. He couldn't see the logic. He got fined.

[jonas21]

After reading the first half of your comment, I was afraid the second half was going to end with something like "Then there was a fire and 3 people died because the exit was blocked."

Getting fined doesn't sound so bad -- if it was like $100, your friend could just be treating it as a $0.30/day fee for convenient parking. But you both seemed to ignore the really high-impact potential outcome. So I guess that proves your point.

[Suppafly]

>Getting fined doesn't sound so bad -- if it was like $100, your friend could just be treating it as a $0.30/day fee for convenient parking.

I had a professor in college that said she basically treated speeding tickets like that. She had to commute on the weekends from central IL to the Chicago and just accepted that she'd probably get 1-2 speeding tickets per year.

[sfn42]

Traffic in general is riddled with this. People don't understand the risks they're taking during their everyday driving and get offended when you comment on it.

[jajko]

Typical folks cutting in front of me while I am barely at safe breaking distance from the car in front of me, on speeds > 100kmh. This is of course always in at least semi-dense traffic, and them immediately obscuring view further means I have less than second to react to any stronger breaking or I slam into them.

I honk them, then they often get aggressive that I dared to react to their perfectly cool maneuver that gave them those precious extra 5 seconds. Bloody a-holes. Had few almost-collisions even this year due to too aggressive drivers riding too close, some were literally car in front of us or next one behind. Keep your distance, I can't emphasize this enough.

[throw10920]

Have you considered buying a dashcam? Then in case you do actually hit them because you weren't able to break fast enough, it's very likely that insurance will end up siding with you, as opposed to the usual outcome where you're the rear-ender.

[jajko]

No but that seems like a good idea, thank you.

[skrebbel]

My hand gesture for "Hey did you hear about the inverse Pascal Scam? It suggests that low-probability high-impact risks are easy to ignore, and I think that's what you're doing right now and that's not going to be good for your health, or mine for that matter, so maybe think about that a bit more in the future" is to raise my middle finger. Unfortunately it inevitably makes the situation worse somehow.

[smogcutter]

I’ve switched to a thumbs down in traffic and can’t recommend it enough. Let’s then know how they should feel without escalating like a middle finger.

[pastage]

I have switched to smiling at things people do well in traffic and trying to give positive reinforcement when I see people who care about others. Some even do it in ways that might seem stupid, e.g a guy in the wrong side of the street was actually just being very considerate.

[skrebbel]

Nice! I tried thumbs up (ie sarcasm) but that's snarky too, and somehow never realized that you could actually do the same thing non-sarcastically. Srsly wow :-) Gonna try, thanks

[omoikane]

In a similar spirit, I knew someone who claimed to not pay for parking permits at our university, and just parked wherever he liked. The parking permits were $100+ per month and the parking fines were ~$300 per citation, so if he gets caught less than once per quarter, he would come out ahead.

He tells me later that it didn't quite work out in terms of saving money, but because he sometimes parked in spots that he could not get permits for, it actually saved time.

[atomic_cowprod]

Up until recently, fares for the LRT system in my city were enforced by a random check by transit police, typically by having an officer board trains and check riders' tickets at random times during random days and handing out fines to fare evaders who they caught.

Between around mid-2006 and the end of 2008 I rode the train to work downtown every day. The trains were so crowded during rush hour that it was impossible for Transit police to board trains to check fares, and even outside rush hour, fare checks were very occasional. A monthly pass at the time was around $75 and a fine for fare evasion was around $200 (the first violation was less than $200, and I think it increased until a cap of something like $250 for repeat offenders). I'd worked it out that if I was caught without paying a fare less than once every three months, it would be cheaper to just pay the fine if/when I got caught rather than buy a pass. So I didn't buy a pass and decided to see how long it would take to actually get caught.

The answer was about 18 months. Got a $170 fine. Which I then forgot about and never actually paid. The statute of limitations on that fine has long since expired.

[lpribis]

You're lucky with that system of fine capping. I had the same mentality with the very expensive trains here, probably saved upwards of 2-3000£ until I got caught. Problem is they actually prosecute you in the courts for repeat offenders so I can no longer risk it.

[rangerelf]

"Odds vs. Stakes"

"The odds of X happening are so low that what's the point?", to which I respond "It only needs to happen once for me to be dead, so, the stakes are way too high for me to risk the odds".

[andsoitis]

> low-probability high-impact

People often equate “risk” with “likelihood”, when it would be more effective to view risk = impact * likelihood.

[BobaFloutist]

Even then, high impact very low likelihood is still often worth avoiding.

Maybe (impact * likelihood) - cost to mitigate