Recalibrating Your Risk Sense

Fighting the availability heuristic means deliberately replacing mental ease with actual data:

• Look up base rates before judging how likely something is
• Ask: "Do I fear this because it is common, or because it is vivid?"
• Remember that personal anecdotes carry emotional weight but little statistical value
• Limit news that overrepresents rare, dramatic events
• Assign rough percentages instead of saying "likely" or "unlikely"

Your brain did not evolve for a world of 24-hour news and viral feeds. Overriding this bias is not natural — it is a trained skill.