this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
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Humans are awful at accessing risk and chance, one of the reasons casinos and lotteries thrive.
Look at fear of flying for an example, all statistics say you are many many many times over more likely to get into a car accident on your way to the airport, than during the flight. Even when the ride to the airport is usually short and the flight very long. Yet people are afraid of flying, but not going by car. By percentage, there are of course those, rightly so, afraid of cars as well.
IIRC most accidents happen during take-off/landing.
Once you're up there it's chill.
It doesn't really matter how you measure it, number of flights, duration, distance traveled, etc.. No matter which, air travel is by far the safest option. The only other that comes anywhere near is trains. Going by car is bad (though motorcycle is even worse), but so many are afraid of flying that they instead takes the car. Which is among the worst things you could do from a safety point of view.
Risk assessment is probability and severity. The probability can be vanishingly low, but if the severity is astoundingly high then acting like a high risk situation could be appropriate.
Take asteroids. The last planet killer to hit us was 94million years ago. A rudimentary estimate could put the probably as 1:94mil. The severity of an asteroid impact of that magnitude is off the charts, so it is reasonable to consider it a risk and act accordingly to spend resources to search for and track asteroid trajectories.
The severity of abduction, murder, and rape is probably pretty high for most people, so considering it a risk even with a very small probability is not unreasonable.
Location sharing doesn't prevent any of that though?
Like, no criminal who would want to rape/murder/abduct you knows whether you are sharing your location with anyone. They would do so regardless before anyone can arrive to help you.
Also, no kidnapper on this planet is stupid enough to take your phone with them. You have a slightly higher chance for authorities to be alerted sooner but that's about it.
Oh yeah, location sharing will have almost no effect those risks. Totally agree.
Just disagreeing that low probability of occurrence automatically means the risk assessment should be low.