How to Find Us: Go into this Del Taco. We will be in the back room if possible.
Parking is free in the lot out front or on the street nearby.
Discussion: The availability heuristic allows us to estimate probabilities based on how available things are to our memory. This is not a terrible heuristic, but it is not perfect, either. Intuitive estimates of frequencies of different crimes tend to correspond better to how often those crimes are reported in the news, than to how often they actually occur. One particularly troubling aspect of this is the availability cascade, a chain reaction which elevates a group's probability estimate like a rising tide: each mention of a subject makes other people more likely to be concerned and mention it to others; each news report makes the subject more popular and makes other news sources more likely to mention it as well. This has a potential to alter public policy, when policy-makers apply the availability heuristic themselves or respond to the probabilities as estimated by the larger group.
Recommended Reading:
- Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation (academic paper)
- Information Cascades post by johnnicolas
- Availability post by Eliezer
- Wikipedia entry
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