recall

← recall

availability heuristic termbias

things that come to mind easily seem more frequent

We judge probability by how easily examples come to mind. Plane crashes are vivid + memorable, so they feel common. Drowning is mundane and forgotten, so it feels rare. (Actual fatalities favor drowning by orders of magnitude.) Affects engineering: outage modes you've seen recently feel likely; failure modes you haven't feel impossible.

topics: decision-theory

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