Base Rate Neglect

Base rate neglect is ignoring how common something is in favour of specific, vivid detail. Told someone is “quiet and reads a lot,” people guess librarian over salesperson — forgetting there are vastly more salespeople, so the base rate should dominate the guess.

It shows up constantly in product reasoning: one loud support ticket feels like a trend, one memorable user becomes “the user.” I lean on the discipline of asking how often this really happens before reacting to how striking this particular case feels.