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I view this particular issue of skewed probabilities with respect to cognitive biases from an evolutionary perspective. Consider the two types of errors in thinking.
Type 1 Error: False Positive
You hear a rustle in the bushes. Not taking any chances, you get scared and run away. If you’re wrong, it’s a very tiny price. Your system gets flushed with adrenaline and cortisol as you experience stress.
Type 2 Error: False Negative
You hear a rustle in the bushes. You think “no big deal.” Turns out it’s a large animal that eats you. Cost is obviously huge. You immediately die and can’t have children. Any children you have already lose a bit of protection and guidance.
Now rinse and repeat across across all our hundreds of billions of human over the past few hundred thousand years, and our pre-human ancestors over the last 10 million years, and we have evolved to harbor massive Type 1 cognitive biases since any of ancestors with Type 2 biases were selected against.
(An interesting side question: Is a reverse-engineered human brain without these cognitive biases fully human?)
Emotionally, with respect to terrorism in particular, and any unknown danger in general, we’re heavily biased to be OK with making Type 1 Errors, while…
