On the second episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Jerry Seinfeld picks up Jimmy Fallon in a 1950s Corvette convertible. As they drive around with no roof and no windows in a car that’s 70 years old, Jimmy asks: “Do you get nervous with no seat belts or airbags or any of that stuff?” Jerry just waves off: “How much have you really used the airbags?”
In Same as Ever, Morgan Housel paraphrases Seinfeld’s joke to make a point: Humans are bad at probabilistic thinking.
For one, we conflate odds and impact. Just because a car crash is a dramatic, negative event does not make it less likely. The odds are the odds, and should they come to pass, you sure do want that airbag.
For another, we usually focus on too small a sample size, Housel suggests. There might only be a one in one million chance you will be in a car crash today, but with billions of people driving, the chances of someone being in a crash are well over 100%—and who’s to say that, someday, that someone won’t be you?
Finally, we rarely look at the totality of possible outcomes. So far, we’ve only talked about car crashes. What about natural disasters? In that category alone there are dozens of options. Earthquakes, fires, floods, storms, hail, snow, ice, heatwaves—the list is long, and a long list is similar to a big sample size: Even if the odds of any one thing occurring are only one percent, the odds of something coming to pass in any given year are actually quite high.
This is only a small snapshot of the many biases fooling our brains into the comfort of certainty where none exists. They’re all worth visiting and revisiting. Enjoy the ride of life, but make sure the windshield is clear—and please, most of the time, pick cars that come with airbags.
