The sheer estimation inadequacy of people I know is confounding. Maybe because media tends to report everything as an unanchored percentage or number. Maybe because humans simply cannot cope with the extremely large or extremely small.
For example, suppose you learn that something ” doubles your risk of cancer.” Well, if the original chance is that one cell out of a trillion might get cancer, this increase to two out of a trillion doesn’t mean much. Especially if it is a “one shot” cause like “smoking” and not “for every cigarette smoked.”
But worse than that, life is complicated. There are lots of other things that are awful that may affect you first.
I find it useful to carry trigger numbers in my head, usually not based on percentage but on raw figures. For example, a meal should cost less than $50, a good sleep is 8 hours, and so on. Some are clearly wrong, some grow out of date, but they are handy “common sense” guidelines. They can send warning signals clearly, and if they do I can examine the relevant data more clearly.
We are constantly bombarded with “new studies” that claim all kinds of universal application. But often they do not, and they are usually personally irrelevant. Again, it is important to be able to estimate just how much they mean to us. A 90-year-old probably need not worry much about general diet discoveries.
Exciting stuff, this “science“ which is often “pseudoscience.“ Hard numbers that need themselves to be put in perspective.
HuntingtonHarborThoughts 