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Humans tend to be very bad at assessing risk – especially personal risk.
they don't live in the real world, actually, just in the one they invent…
I would be curious to see how the Google algorithms play into graph #2. It feels like searching medical symptoms often takes you straight to the worst possible causes.
Aftermath of our evolution, I guess…visceral threats like terrorism are easier to dwell on than abstract ones like the future threat of cancer.
I think there's an XKCD comic about that and WebMD…
I wish that these statistics were based upon polling as opposed to Google searches and media coverage as there might be valid reasons to search for things or the media to cover certain things other then risk of fatalities. With that, I think that I have seen even more mismatched results when it comes to poll results. As CyberKitten and yourself are discussing, we are poor at assessing overall threat levels, probably due to evolution.