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!
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).
That’s fucking wild. That’s way too many gun deaths. Vehicular traffic is the backbone of the economy, but the way people pilot these 2 ton bullets still enrages me. Americans think THAT level of harm from guns is acceptable? That’s wild. You guys need to sort your shit out.
No one said it was acceptable. My point is that gun deaths are rarely the random event that people perceive them to be. You can opt to stay away from bad people and not murder yourself. You cannot opt to force everyone on the road to drive safely.
No one said it was acceptable.
You didn’t say it explicitly, but lots of people do say it’s acceptable.
My point is that gun deaths are rarely the random event that people perceive them to be.
They’re the leading cause of death of kids.
You can opt to stay away from bad people and not murder yourself.
A bystander shot in a drive by is also a victim of a gang related shooting.
You cannot opt to force everyone on the road to drive safely.
Right but you can do things like driver’s licences, drivers abstract checks, mandatory insurance, vehicle inspections, and develop pedestrian friendly infrastructure. Too bad there’s nothing analogous for guns.
As to children’s cause of death, I alluded to that. Why do they include 18 and 19 year olds in that stat? The picture in our heads is little, blonde, 8-yo Susie getting randomly gunned down. Little Susie is far more likely to drown.
As to the last bit, the 2A exists and American courts have upheld it to mean the right of individual ownership. Those are both facts, not opinions, and it doesn’t matter what you or I think of those facts. You can’t impose restrictions such as you mentioned on a Constitutional right. We’re kinda stuck as American’s couldn’t agree on a Constitutional amendment to make today Chocolate Chip Cookie day.
I’ve thought long and hard and only have a few ideas:
Storage laws don’t seem to run afoul of the 2A. Devil in the details though.
Draconian sentences for parents whose children access their guns and cause harm. Same for parents buying a minor child a gun as a gift. This seems to be playing out!
Lastly, and here’s where catch I get hella hate: Mandatory gun safety courses for teens. Kids need to experience and use weapons for three reasons. 1) It takes the mystique and Hollywood out of guns. They get a sense that these things are weapons, and I often refer to guns as such. 2) If latter in life they choose to own a gun, they go in knowing what to expect and how to be safe. 3) Maybe most importantly, they can recognize unsafe behavior among peers and shut it down or avoid such people.
This is what I looked at before commenting
In 2024, firearms were the leading cause of death overall for young people ages 1 to 17 for the fifth consecutive year.
So we’re not including 18 and 19 year olds in the stat.
The picture in our heads is little, blonde, 8-yo Susie getting randomly gunned down. Little Susie is far more likely to drown.
No, I was including teenagers in my mental image. I actually imagine kids fooling around and accidentally shooting each other being far more common than drivebys hitting children. Also, woundings aren’t in the statistics I could find, only deaths.
Also, are you sure she is more likely to drown?
What about requiring either actual well regulated militia membership or liability insurance. Militias would have a collective liability and would have to self police, private insurers could implement whatever conditions they thought necessary.
Boeing also murdered a witness whistleblowing about their safety violations just before his deposition, right around that time. I’m sure that didn’t help their public image.
I agree with all but two of your examples, and they stem from the same concern:
RE: outbreaks/airplane issues in the US, the fear isn’t thinking it’s common because it’s reported. At all. It’s the (rightful) breakage of trust in institutions after aggressive political cuts. It’s the underlying dread of everything that is now unreported due to understaffing and deregulation, so you can’t trust reported numbers to be accurate.
Our food was already known to be of poor quality, but the fig leaf of standards has been ripped away. I was, however, told growing up that major airlines are the safest form of travel (private planes are more dangerous) so to see that rigor be abandoned is unnerving.
Here’s a humorous take from a farmer on food safety:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/R5x_wM-vSg8
That’s guys channel is well worth checking out! He’s a small farmer that spent 10-years building up, pays his people solid wages and talks farming and politics. He has a degree or two and schools us on American history and race relations. I love that guy.
EDIT: Meant to note in the OP, most of these recalls are about the possibility of an issue. An FDA Level I alert! AH! Turns out they’re pretty much all Level I alerts because they operate on “better safe than sorry”.
That’s guys channel is well worth checking out! He’s a small farmer that spent 10-years building up, pays his people solid wages and talks farming and politics. He has a degree or two and schools us on American history and race relations. I love that guy.
heh, give me any random fifth of that paragraph and I could guess Farming While Beige :)
That fuckin’ guy needs to expand to Hampton Roads. He’s already delivering farther away in different directions!
“What is it nooow?” 🙄
I don’t normally seek out reaction videos, but I don’t mind his because of the reset of the stuff he posts - but also he does do some good ones. lol
I hope he expands into NJ sometime but I think he might think that was a curse lol
A little far to drive, maybe, but if he makes it that far, he’ll be doing pretty darned well :)
I mean, you’re still wrong on both points: our food has never been safer and flying is both the safest way to travel and safer than it’s ever been.
Is that kind of like when you buy a red car suddenly you see red cars all the time?
That’s frequency illusion or the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, nothing to do with memory of events. But it’s closely related I would think!
Appreciate the write up
Thanks! Those are all items that have driven me nuts at one time or another so I had to get them off my chest. We humans are so easy to manipulate it’s rather horrifying.
It was useful for the warlords and kings to have subjects that were pliable. Thousands of years of rebellious souls being removed from the gene pool made monarchy much easier.
Hah! Dad said much the same about the Japanese. “You spend a thousand years chopping off the heads of rude people, you’ll end up with a very polite society.”
Well over half of gun fatalities are suicides
What’s the other half? I’m not saying they’re all mass shootings or that if you go outside, you’ll get shot. But even just under 50% as non-suicides is a lot of shootings.
Also, I think mass shootings are under-reported. I go through the news every week day and I’m shocked about how many show up that I haven’t heard about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_the_2020s
Mass shooting reporting is dependant on a few things; whether anyone died or not and the number, the age of the victims and how random the event was. That graph I posted mostly shows what I mean. In that year there was either a mass shooting every other day, or one every two months. People come away from the news claiming there’s literally one every single day. Lies, damned lies and statistics.
Most of the rest are said to be “gang related”, which is a dog whistle meaning, “Brown people killing each other doesn’t count.” It’s a useful distinction only in that such killings aren’t random. You’re more likely to catch a Volvo to the chest walking down any given street than a 9mm-shaped pill.
Most of the rest are said to be “gang related”, which is a dog whistle meaning, “Brown people killing each other doesn’t count.”
Could you be very clear about what you mean here. I’m not sure if it’s what it comes across as. Meaning, are you saying that all of those other shooters are brown people shooting each other? Cuz if it is, dude, you’re racist af.
Do you know what a dog whistle is? When right-wingers talk about gun deaths and “gang violence”, they are saying it’s all brown people shooting each other, thus it doesn’t count, nudge, nudege, wink, wink. Charlie Kirk was about to explain it for us but caught a pill to the neck in mid sentence. :)
I do know what it is. It seemed like you were doing that, but I wasn’t sure. That’s why I’m asking for confirmation.
