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August 18

Humans are bad at risk

Imagine that there is a pandemic going on, and I do something that I know puts me at some risk for getting infected (e.g., attend a large gathering). But the risk is small, and I don't get sick - this time. If we take the same risk several times, and we don't get harmed, then pretty soon, then I realistically expect that we will start thinking that the actual risk has declined. But the risk hasn't changed. The fact that someone doesn't experience a 1:100 outcome in 10 exposures doesn't prove that it's not a 1:100 risk.

Or, we all wear masks to the store, and nobody gets sick, so we start thinking that masks are unnecessary because nobody's getting sick. We see this in vaccines, too: Almost nobody gets measles, so there's no need for a measles vaccine anymore, right?

There must be a name for this phenomenon. What's the name, and what's the best Wikipedia article about this? (Please ping me.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:15, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing: Faulty generalization? BirdValiant (talk) 00:25, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Nicely connected -- but if anything the Gambler's fallacy is the opposite! The gambler's fallacy says that, over time, the probability of the rare event (i.e., winning a jackpot) is supposed to increase. But here we're talking about the (equally invalid) notion that since the improbable thing still hasn't happened, it must be getting even less probable. —Steve Summit (talk) 15:44, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Also relevant and roughly opposite is the Ecological fallacy. Just because the average chance of contracting the disease for a particular type of behavior is 1/100, doesn't mean that the chance is 1/100 for a particular individual engaging in that behavior. And it is often reasonable to change one's opinion based on Empirical evidence, though it can be tricky to determine how much empirical evidence is needed.--Wikimedes (talk) 02:00, 21 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The black swan theory purports to explain, among other things, the psychological biases that blind people, both individually and collectively, to uncertainty and to a rare event's massive role in historical affairs. These same cognitive biases are also at work for less exceptional things. As the optimist said who fell off a skyscraper, as he zoomed past the tenth floor, "so far so good". Some relevant external links: [1]; [2]; [3]. --Lambiam 08:10, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A classic essay on the phenomenon -- although I don't believe it gives it a name -- is this one, by Richard Feynman.

Another related phenomenon is Risk compensation. —Steve Summit (talk) 12:00, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The "See also" links at Risk compensation are all suggestive, but none of them exactly describe the phenomenon being asked about. —Steve Summit (talk) 13:40, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It could be called "immortality delusion", for which young people are especially notorious. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:21, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

For a hard-to-believe (is this for real?) risk assessment fail, check this out. --Lambiam 13:43, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I seem to remember that Tversky and Kahneman touched on risk assessment in their work on heuristics in decision-making back in the 1970s. See Heuristics in judgment and decision-making. There's also a big research base on risk-taking in driving e.g. see Risk compensation#Road transport and Jonah (1986). Martinevans123 (talk) 13:55, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Baseball Bugs, the closest Wikipedia article to that idea that I could find is Young invincibles. There probably ought to be one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:46, 20 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Optimism bias is involved, but also in your examples, the birthday paradox. If the likelihood of an infection between transmitted between two people coming into contact is p, then between N people in a room (all coming into contact with each other), it's approx. p·N²/2 and people don't recognize that quadratic growth. Thus the superspreader events in bars, churches, and (now) schools. 2602:24A:DE47:BB20:50DE:F402:42A6:A17D (talk) 15:20, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the idea that "the sooner everyone gets it the better". Early on this was a policy option discussed by Boris Johnson, I think. Just one facet of the UK government's "clear messaging" strategy? Akin to the notion of the old-fashioned pox party which still continues, it seems. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:37, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, except they can't keep you alive until you recover if there's no hospital bed, doctor, or equipment and medicine necessary to do so. Whether or not the same number of people will end up getting it in the end is irrelevant if more people die that could have survived if there was room at the hospital for them. --Jayron 32 17:47, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I think the notion was more one "acceptable level of losses" i.e. let all the old and at risk die off quickly. Sorry for the WP:FORUM. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:19, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

To be fair, Martinevans123 the "herd immunity" proposal seems to have been advanced by Sir Patrick Vallance, the Government Chief Scientific Adviser and his chums. [4] It seems a bit harsh to blame Boris for acting on the advice of his adviser. Alansplodge (talk) 14:26, 20 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

So much for the "pro-life" stuff. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:17, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I believe thé term you"re looking for is normalization of deviance 2A01:E34:EF5E:4640:4FB:4322:1642:1DC9 (talk) 17:20, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ah yes, creeping normality, boiling frog, etc. --Jayron 32 17:26, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It would also be really, really helpful if we knew for certain that no one will get this damn virus more than once. But, we don’t. Not even close. Hence, “herd immunity” this year is more of a “Gee, sorry Grandma.” DOR (HK) (talk) 01:42, 19 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Also, the virus may mutate and come back with a vengeance, as happened in the 1918 flu pandemic, which deserves to be called the "U.S. Army flu". --Lambiam 10:25, 19 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner! I'm not finding the name in recent review articles about COVID-19, but it is discussed in sources such as [5]. Thank you all, and please keep posting interesting links. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:07, 20 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You mean links like Prevention paradox? --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 14:49, 21 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes! WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:15, 25 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There's a wapo article about this today.[6] The behaviour doesn't seem to have a specific name in it, but the idea is that people respond differently to near-term vs faraway rewards or risk. I gues behavioural economics also studies these paradoxes. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:DDAF (talk) 05:33, 23 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Why wasn't outsourcing a thing before the late 20th century?

Why wasn't outsourcing (as in, sending jobs to other, cheaper countries to save money/costs) a thing before the late 20th century? Companies over the last several decades have become huge fans of outsourcing jobs--especially to the developing world--but I haven't heard of companies actually engaging in this practice much before the late 20th century even though it might have, for instance, made economic sense for early 20th century British or German industrialists to move some of their factories and jobs to cheaper places such as Russia, Italy, Austria-Hungary, the Balkans, and/or the Ottoman Empire. So, why didn't this happen? Futurist110 (talk) 21:34, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Of course outsourcing happened. It was just called colonialism and most of the exported jobs were agricultural rather than industrial since the destination nations often lacked the educational infrastructure to provide industrial laborers or skilled workers. As to getting work done in Russia instead of Britain, I kind of suspect that any cost savings would've been minimal and consumed by the cost of postage/telegrams, as well as fraud, waste, and abuse. 199.66.69.67 (talk) 22:05, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Logistics... until the mid 20th century, most of the world's steal was produced in the UK, US and Germany, and it took a LOT of steal to build a factory. Why incur the costs of shipping the steal needed to build a factory all the way to India or Russia when you could simply build the factory at home, close to the iron works? Besides, in an era when unions were just getting started, the difference in labor costs wasn't all THAT much. Blueboar (talk) 22:29, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Although thievery was (and remains) common, I believe you meant "steel". 2606:A000:1126:28D:4010:D10A:69ED:7785 (talk) 22:36, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

One of the more obvious and less popular ourtsourcings here in Australia has been call centres. The clear reason this couldn't happen earlier was an absence of suitable telecommunications. HiLo48 (talk) 23:46, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Futurist110 -- in a sense there was. The U.S. textile industry originated in New England, but most mills were transferred to southern U.S. states starting in the late 19th century, and then were transferred to 3rd-world countries beginning in the 1960s. Of course, the full development of outsourcing depended on containerized shipping, GATT and other trade agreements, and later on the Internet... AnonMoos (talk) 01:01, 19 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

One word: Containerization! oh, and transportation time/costs in general, too. DOR (HK) (talk) 01:46, 19 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Of course outsourcing was a thing before the twentieth century, it just wasn't known by that name. Lots of pre-modern economic theories had outsourcing as a key component. Mercantilism is built upon the outsourcing of certain tasks (resource extraction and raw material production) to colonial territories and the protection of other tasks (final product manufacture) to the home country. Large parts of Adam Smith's writing deal with outsourcing even though he doesn't use the word he clearly understands the concepts and deals with it extensively in his seminal work The Wealth of Nations. Especially in Book Four, where he goes in depth on protectionism and the attempts by nations to prevent outsourcing of certain industries. And remember, he wrote that in the 18th century. --Jayron 32 14:48, 19 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

For countries with empires, there was a vested interest in keeping manufacturing at home and then using overseas territories as captive markets. Alansplodge (talk) 16:18, 19 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but where local labor was more expensive, resource extraction was often outsourced as it was less expensive to obtain the raw materials from outside the home nation, and import those. Remember the word "outsourcing" is a term d'art for anti-globalists and protectionists that just means "imports"; every item or product or resource that was not made inside your countries borders means some one else outside your country's borders was paid for it. It's a fun politically charged word to use when someone is feeling particularly xenophobic, but it just means "imports". Goods and services can only be produced in two places: inside one's own borders or outside them. They're either domestic goods and services or imported goods and services. All imported goods and services have "outsourced" labour, for logical reasons. --Jayron 32 16:23, 19 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, but our outsourcing article has a rather narrower definition. Alansplodge (talk) 16:49, 19 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That's fair. Outsourcing is really more about importing of services rather than goods, so it does have some important distinctions in a service-based economy, and I do agree that in the modern economy, the concept of "outsourcing" services is much more prevalent, but also not entirely unheard of as a concept even in earlier centuries. Banking, for example, was often outsourced, major European banks were often based in Florence (Medici Bank), Augsburg (Fugger family and Welser family), or the Netherlands (Amsterdam Wisselbank, Clifford family). --Jayron 32 17:27, 19 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"It's a fun politically charged word to use when someone is feeling particularly xenophobic, but it just means "imports"." That seems needlessly accusatory. I'm sure I've seen lots of companies describe what they are doing as outsourcing, lots of outsourcing doesn't involve offshoring, and if someone was feeling "particularly xenophobic", I would think there are far more pejorative terms they could use. Iapetus (talk) 09:23, 20 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

When the higher-ups use that term, it has positive connotations because it's about cutting costs. When worker bees use that term, it's typically derogatory - and for the same reason. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:08, 21 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]