to wonder why people think if something hasn't happened to them then it is unlikely?

[chargey]

I see it all the time on here. For example, someone will post a dog bit me. So many posters will then pipe up saying a dog has never bit me.

Seriously can people not understand that everyone has different experiences. Yes a dog may not have bit you but dogs to do bite people. Yet I will see post after post saying the same thing,

Is thinking really that limited?

"I had no choice but to send my children to private school. It was my only option."

Aye, but no, it wasn't though, was it? Many, many people have no choice regarding private education. Not one of these people actually send their children to a private school.

No it isn't.

It's from professional involvement in modelling (the statistical kind, not the clothes horse type) observing the many millions of events that have no negative outcome compared with a small fraction that do. How many people came into contact with a dog today? Millions. How many people got bitten by dogs? Tens? Hundreds? Thousands? How many people didn't get bitten by dogs? Millions.

If the statistical risk is low and 99.99%+ are unaffected, then it is very unlikely that the average person will be bitten by a dog. It doesn't mean that it won't happen, of course it could happen to some people. But it is so rare (ie very unlikely which is not the same as saying it never happens) that it's going to happen to any individual, that there is no reason to fear being bitten by a dog or change your behaviour due to the presence of dogs, unless you're in the habit of coming into contact with out of control dogs, which most people aren't. Nothing to do with 'survivor bias' just a rational assessment of the facts.

Availability Heuristic ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic#:~:text=An%20availability%20heuristic%20is%20a,on%20a%20comparably%20distant%20concept.

… or they could be thick ? … or indeed both ?

My parents have always been questioning my parenting choices and making comments along the lines of 'I have never used car seats back in my days and nothing ever happened' or 'me and my sister were left at home alone all the time when we were 5&6 and it was fine' so I've always thought it's a generational thing as times have changed. Yeah well I'm not taking that risk just because it didn't happen to you doesn't mean it won't happen to anyone.
However I've lived to learn it's not an older generation at all. There are plenty of know-it-all people left and right who like to make unnecessary comments that doesn't help anyone simply because they have very different experiences in their lives.

... or are they just being dicks in the shops? 🤔

I think that’s fair. I think I find it particularly annoying on ‘woo’ threads, when people say ‘It’s easy to be sceptical when it’s never happened to you’, to which the answer is usually that of course mildly inexplicable things or coincidences have happened to me, I just don’t see them as having a supernatural explanation.

Yanbu

A lot of people have no empathy and don't go out much so aren't exposed to the lunacies of the world all that often

It's when people say 'just pay for a hotel' when someone is describing a minor annoyance visiting relatives.

Even if you technically have the money for a hotel it's a lot of money to drop and you'd be perfectly justified using that money on a school trip or something similarly 'non essential'.

I also agree. I've seen so many threads with situations that I have personally seen happen but some accuse the OP of being a troll because it couldn't possibly happen.

Also, the posters who say that they've read it before. They may have done but also there are millions of people in the world, the same things do happen to different people.

There is a couple that I follow on social media. They make humorous videos about marriage. The wife is currently pregnant, due sometime this month.

They made a video where the husband was hoisting her up off the couch, and they used a clip from the show 1000 Lb Sisters. It was meant to be funny.

Multiple women commented on the video about how ridiculous some women act when they're pregnant, and how being pregnant is not that difficult. 🤷‍♀️🤦‍♀️

I've had three easy pregnancies with three straightforward vaginal births. I never had trouble tying my shoes, or shaving my legs, or polishing my toenails, like many women do during pregnancy. But I don't doubt that other women have those struggles, or their pregnancies were more difficult than mine, or their births were less straightforward.

I don't understand the attitude at all. The comment section of that video was actually quite disheartening. All these women tearing down another woman because their experience was different.

It could be that people understand statistics and risk frequencies across populations.

As a researcher, I can say with certainty that it isn't this.

I find that people assume their experiences are standard and their opinions are unique, but in most cases it's the other way round.

Yes! This is ironic because I started a thread only yesterday for advice on including my MIL as a grand parent to new baby ( which I need to check back in on ) but you see SO many people on here who are like me and have a good relationship with their in-laws, who can't comprehend that not everyone has that luxury. Someone will start a reasonable thread about a problem they're having with an inlaw dynamic and get responses such as 'my MIL is a lovely woman...' great? Lol

I suppose it's natural to want to convince yourself that bad things won't happen to you. But yeah, it's just stupidity really - as a species we're often pretty bad at understanding probability and risk and all that.

Even worse (to me) are people who hear someone say, for example, "Most people who get X disease are women" and respond, "No, that can't be right, my cousin had it and he's a man" and stuff like that. Reliable indicator of someone who's pretty dim.

I regularly come across this with a family member. I will say smoking is harmful but she will say so and so smoked and he lived until he was 95.

People just like to twist!
It's unreal!

Yes it is true IRL as well. I used to work and travel in a number of developing countries and I recalled once sending an e-mail to my friend in Australia saying among other things that the annual spring cull by shooting of stray dogs was occurring and it was quite unpleasant. She replied saying 'Don;t be so silly. Surely the local councils have a proper neutering programme'.

She's lucky I did not send her pictures tbh. But it made me realise that some people are incapable of seeing that what happens in their own little world does not happen all over the world.

You certainly see it all over MN.

So completly irrelevant to the OP's point, then.

@AnxiouslyAwaitingSpring you appear not to have read what I said in my post. Or at least not taken it in.