You Should Know

The availability heuristic is a cognitive shortcut where people judge how common, likely, or important something is based on how easily examples of it come to mind, rather than how frequently it actually occurs.

Keep in mind, the media reports unusual events, and remember the old adage, "If it bleeds, it leads." This effect is compounded when we hear the same story from various sources and media types or a single event kicks of coverage of less serious but similar events.

US examples:

FOOD RECALLS

There's a widespread belief that federal cuts have led to an unsafe food supply and that recalls have skyrocketed. Weirdly enough, 2026 is on track to be a normal year for recalls, maybe even low.

The cyclospora outbreak, which was damned bad, was largely a result of a diminished CDC's ability to track the origin and spread. That was a result of staffing and budget cuts. While this event was going on, every single food recall made the news. 2026 seems unprecedented!

Keep in mind, 99% of food recalls are voluntary (this from several sources), initiated by the producer, nothing to do with the government. Producers have skin in the game. They don't want to get sued or see their stock tank, let alone have the feds twist their booty up like a balloon animal. The remainder are a result of the FDA and the FSIS doing their job. Also, keep on eye on the amounts involved. Most are less than a single semi truckload.

AIRLINE SAFETY

After Boeing lost a door over Portland, there were daily stories about airplane issues. Every tiny event was breathlessly reported, especially if it involved a Boeing plane. Absurdly enough, reports at the time would slip a sentence in near the end of the story saying "this wasn't a Boeing plane BTW".

Boeing has no doubt pulled some serious safety blunders, but neither that company, nor the industry as a whole, suddenly became unsafe, but you wouldn't know that if you followed the news in early 2024.

TRAIN SAFETY

After the disastrous derailment in East Palestine Ohio, it seemed trains were flying off the tracks daily. AH! And once again, daily reporting bent our opinion on a thing that's actually common and usually not a big deal. After the hype wore off, well, when was the last time you read a story about a derailment? You could have read one every day in early 2023.

FRIVOLOUS LAWSUITS

The media doesn't report the millions of meritorious lawsuits. They don't report cases thrown out by judges, and they can't report those that don't make it past an initial attorney consult.

Lawyers have to work with the same judges for years, maybe a whole career. The last thing they want is to antagonize them with BS. On top of that, attorneys don't want a loss on their record or a hit to their reputation.

One other note, some seemingly frivolous suits actually have legal merit, but the headlines only state the absurd part. Read the whole story. Anyone up for some McDonald's coffee?

GETTING SHOT/MASS SHOOTINGS

Americans and foreigners both think it's common to get shot in the US. The CDC puts yearly vehicular fatalities at the same number, give or take, as gun fatalities (50,000). So the odds are the same, right? Overall, yes. In reality? Not quite. The better question would be, are you more likely to die by gunshot or car crash?

Well over half of gun fatalities are suicides. Not to downplay those deaths! But they are not random events. Most of the rest is gang related activity. And again, not to downplay real deaths, but the vast majority of those are not random either.

Consider two scenarios:

A man goes nuts, kills his wife and two children, them himself. That makes national headlines, sometimes over a few days.

A family of 4 gets smeared off the interstate. Maybe a blurb in the local news, reported once and done.

But aren't mass shootings a daily event? Nope. While way too damned common, the scene in our head when we hear the term rarely matches the reporting of total numbers. This chart spells it out better than I can.

Quite a disparity! Note the sources. The three on the left are anything but right-wing.

The availability heuristic applies to school shootings as well; you'll hear about every event. Some sources count any time a gun is discharged on school grounds. If I put in round in the soccer field at midnight on Saturday, "school shooting". You'll find the same sorts of disparity as the mass shooting chart. You'll find yet another disparity looking into the most common cause of childhood deaths. (One wonders why sources include 18 and 19 year olds. Lock up your guns and teach your kids to swim, no worries.)

TO CLOSE

Examine your biases regularly. Check multiple sources, check past numbers vs. what you're seeing in the media. Read the whole story!

Random, horrible events make news, not common events, even if horrible. Yet sometimes common events can be blown up by reporting of a large initial event.

Don't fall into social media hype. Over on Bluesky they have a completely different set of concerns about current events than lemmy because once a thing takes off, it gets amplified in a given space. I've often seen an item get reported several times in short order and thought, "Oh boy, here goes this week's hype."

For those inclined to really unpack this thing, here's the paper that kicked off the idea of the availability heuristic:

https://cebma.org/assets/Uploads/Tversky_Kahneman_1974.pdf

Haven't read it all myself, but it's a banger so far!