[S]omeone is diagnosed with autism after receiving the , so people assume a causal connection – even when there isn’t one. - David Spiegelhalter

Probability was only invented a few hundred years ago. It's not a natural way to think at all. It's extremely difficult and complex. Anything that can help people do it, is of benefit.

If you go to the English Parachuting Association web site... you find this lovely Excel spreadsheet which has got all the deaths... [F]or the last 20 years, 4.6 million jumps, 48 deaths... or 10 in a million. On average, with going up in a plane... I thought there's around 7 or 10 in a million chances of me dying. There's 50 million people in England and Wales... Every day 50 of them have accidental or violent deaths... not to do with their health. So a couple are murdered a day, a few are run over, some people fall off ladders, etc... So that's 1 in a million... Our daily dose of acute risk is a [a 1 in a million chance of dying]. So jumping out of a plane is only about a week's worth. ...[I]n terms of overall mortality... at my age, 59, it's 7,000 micromorts a year in terms of my chances of dying. So an extra 7 or 10 on top of that... [I]t's worthwhile doing... it once....So I did it [parachuted], and I survived.

There is a way... which comes from economics and social science. It was developed by... Frank Knight, and Keynes used this... The distinction between risk and uncertainty...
[R]isk is about things... we... understand... known unknowns, to use Donald Rumsfeld's... great phrase... [something] we can put numbers on, things within... circumscribed situations... A lot of medicine is like this... repetition, a lot of data. ...[I]nsurance is like this ...We know roughly what the chances are, and we can talk about the numbers.
Uncertainty is when... we don't know the numbers, or... deeper... we don't even know... the problem... the options... the possible outcomes...