‘Smoking can’t be that bad for you: my grandfather smoked three packs of cigarettes a day and lived to be more than 100.’ Or: ‘Manhattan is really safe. I know someone who lives in the middle of the Village and he never locks his door. Not even when he goes on vacation, and his apartment has never been broken into.’ We use statements like these to try to prove something, but they actually prove nothing at all. When we speak like this, we succumb to the availability bias.
