What if We Thought About Risk Decisions Differently?

Jacob Kaplan-Moss challenges the common belief that people are inherently bad at assessing risk. Drawing from conducting 100+ digital security checkups and experience in high-hazard outdoor activities, he argues that people often have surprisingly accurate risk assessments. He proposes a harm-reduction approach: instead of trying to correct people's risk judgments, trust their assessments and give them better tools to manage their existing behavior. Using password management as a case study, he shows that helping people incrementally improve their current practices yields better real-world outcomes than insisting on theoretically optimal solutions. He acknowledges limits to this framing (e.g., vaccine misinformation) but advocates for applying the 'trust people's risk assessment' lens more often in security and safety contexts.