Wikipedia will tell you the availability heuristic is a mental shortcut we use to predict the frequency of an event based on how easily an example can be brought to mind.
Modern media distorts our ability to use this built-in heuristic effectively by discussing and presenting rare events far too frequently. In fact, that's what media does almost by definition. Unfortunately, we aren't well-adapted for this scenario: you can't just turn the heuristic off in your decision-making and thought processes.
For example, if you've been paying attention to popular media lately, you will probably think about H1N1 if you think about death. (Of course, your actual risk from H1N1 is small compared to more traditional factors.) Along the same lines, particuarly earlier this decade you might have thought terrorism caused a significant loss of life globally compared to other causes. Probably more people are afraid of planes than cars even though it's clearly irrational.
We could come up with tons of other examples, but let's skip to the useful part: how can you fight back against media abuse of your own cognitive limitations? Unfortunately, merely reading this post and becoming more aware of the bias will not tend to increase the accuracy of your decisions, even though you probably think it will. But one easy way is to stop paying attention to the popular media so you can calibrate more accurately. Another way is to find accurate data (to the extent that such exists) on issues you care about and consult it frequently, such that the facts are always fresh in your memory for the heuristic to pull up.
I haven't really managed to develop a SuperMemo habit I can stick with, but the incremental reading tool is useful for self-programming. I imagine you could come up with a more efficient application if you had the goal of "undistorting the availability heuristic" instead of "maximizing retention of fact-based information". One could get a disproportionate amount of benefit from just 5 minutes of review per day.
Sadly, it's easier to just turn on the TV.
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