[djoldman]

I'm often reminded of this gallup poll:

> How worried are you that you or someone in your family will become a victim of terrorism -- very worried, somewhat worried, not too worried or not worried at all?

It averages around 35-40% very or somewhat worried.

Most people's worries and anxieties are really misaligned with statistical likelihood.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/4909/terrorism-united-states.as...

[lifeformed]

Being worried is different from it actually happening though. If we started executing 10% of the population each year, I think more than 10% of the people would be worried they're next.

[rsynnott]

At a random 10% everyone could and should be worried that they'd be in the next 10%. That's 10% chance of being executed per year! That's really bad!

It's not at all similar to a _rare_ phenomenon, or at least it _shouldn't_ be, but some people are inclined to treat very fringe risks (or at least some very fringe risks; there are likely more people worried about being killed by terrorism than food poisoning, say) as very great risks.

[kelnos]

That's a pretty... strange example? 10% is fairly large odds that you'll be in the next batch, certainly high enough to cause worry. I would quite rationally shy away from any activity that gave me a 10% chance of death doing it.

The idea that 35+% of people are worried that they'll be the victim of terrorism is something that we should be worried about (heh). It suggests that people's risk assessment is completely unrelated to reality. I am as close to 0% worried as I could be that I'll be a victim of terrorism. Thinking otherwise is laughable. There are plenty of actually real things to be worried about...

[a_bonobo]

I've recently learned about Tuchman's law after I bought her A Distant Mirror at a booksale

>Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place. Besides, persistence of the normal is usually greater than the effect of the disturbance, as we know from our own times. After absorbing the news of today, one expects to face a world consisting entirely of strikes, crimes, power failures, broken water mains, stalled trains, school shutdowns, muggers, drug addicts, neo-Nazis, and rapists. The fact is that one can come home in the evening—on a lucky day—without having encountered more than one or two of these phenomena. This has led me to formulate Tuchman's Law, as follows: "The fact of being reported multiplies the apparent extent of any deplorable development by five- to tenfold" (or any figure the reader would care to supply).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_W._Tuchman#cite_note-M...