"Constructive paranoia"

To avoid injury, be attentive to minor hazards that you encounter frequently.

“Consider: If you’re a New Guinean living in the forest, and if you adopt the bad habit of sleeping under dead trees whose odds of falling on you that particular night are only 1 in 1,000, you’ll be dead within a few years.” …

“Studies have compared Americans’ perceived ranking of dangers with the rankings of real dangers, measured either by actual accident figures or by estimated numbers of averted accidents. It turns out that we exaggerate the risks of events that are beyond our control, that cause many deaths at once or that kill in spectacular ways — crazy gunmen, terrorists, plane crashes, nuclear radiation, genetically modified crops. At the same time, we underestimate the risks of events that we can control.”

Jared Diamond, author and a professor of geography at the University of California, writing about the biggest single lesson he learnt from 50 years of field work on the island of New Guinea. 28th January 2013.

See also

Metacognition and availability bias.