10. Specific risks are perceived as
more
dangerous than more general risks
An experimental result in cognitive
psychology is that stories with more details sound more plausible, even if its
probability is lower than the general case and the entire story is made up.
This is called the conjunction fallacy15. For example, Òmutiny on a
nuclear submarineÓ sounds more dangerous than Òa large sea catastrophe,Ó though
the former is a subcategory of the latter. Yudkowsky writes: ÒFrom the point of
view of probability theory, adding more detail to the story makes it less
likelyÉ but in terms of human psychology, the addition of each new detail makes
the story all the more credible.Ó Many people are not familiar with this basic
logical and probabilistic truth, and focus instead on highly specific scenarios
at the expense of more general concerns.