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Estimate how likely something is to go wrong

EstimationAvailability heuristicLoss aversion

When to use

You need to assess how likely a risk or failure mode is before deciding how much weight to give it.

What you'll get

A calibrated assessment of the actual likelihood, separated from how vivid or recent it feels, plus a prioritised list of what actually deserves attention.

The prompt

I'm trying to assess the risk of [RISK OR BAD OUTCOME]. Context: [CONTEXT].

My current sense: this feels [VERY LIKELY / SOMEWHAT LIKELY / UNLIKELY / I'M NOT SURE].

Help me calibrate this properly:

- How easily I can imagine something happening is not the same as how likely it is. Things that are vivid, recent, or widely reported feel more probable than they are. Has my sense of this risk been shaped by something I recently read, heard, or experienced?
- What is the actual base rate? How often does this type of thing happen in situations like mine, independent of how it's been covered or how vividly I can picture it?
- Are there risks in this situation I should be paying more attention to precisely because they feel mundane or slow-moving? The risks that actually cause the most damage tend to be the ones nobody was tracking.

Give me a calibrated view of the actual likelihood of [RISK], and a prioritised list of what in this situation actually deserves the most attention.
Why this prompt works
The availability heuristic makes vivid, emotionally charged risks feel far more probable than base rates warrant. The prompt explicitly separates "how vivid this feels" from "how likely this is."

The psychology behind this

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