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No individual in real life takes actions against 10⁻⁵ events.
(At least no one who is free from mental illness -- OCD for eg.)
(At least no one who is free from mental illness -- OCD for eg.)
That& #39;s more like a 10⁻⁶ death risk, since the event risk appears to be below 10⁻⁵ and most don& #39;t die of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis.
A one-in-a-million chance? Really? You& #39;d be doing nothing else. Consider flooding of your home, a real risk to life. We take action to avoid that ... at the 10⁻² *annual* risk level, your 1 in 100 flood.
That& #39;s above 10⁻¹ *occupation time* risk, if you stay there 10 years. Yet your agent, and your local Council, will tell you that is & #39;flood free& #39;.
Ok, probably you don& #39;t die when the flood actually comes, so the death risk here is maybe only ~10⁻⁴, but there are other serious consequences and few benefits.
Humans are remarkable risk computation engines; it& #39;s an evolutionary survival thing. But we are programmed to do that rapidly, via heuristics; we do not do calculations. So when presented with very small numerical risks, we get it all badly wrong.
What is & #39;safe& #39;? There are things that are impossible, cannot physically happen, where the risk is exactly zero, but they are uninteresting. In the real world & #39;safe& #39; is a relative concept; it means & #39;very low risk& #39;.
How low? I think it means & #39;low enough that a reasonable person would simply ignore the risk& #39;. That I suggest mostly happens at much higher likelihoods than your 10⁻⁵ or 10⁻⁶ level.
But there is an important caveat. What people will accept depends strongly on whether a risk is *imposed* or them by some authority, or instead is knowingly and willingly accepted. Several orders of magnitude difference.
(There is a literature on this stuff; no need to guess.)
(There is a literature on this stuff; no need to guess.)
