Chances, Options, and the Presence

I cam across an old TED talk by Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert. From what I know about my future (close to nothing) I can only agree with him, "our beliefs about what will make us happy are often wrong". In my particular case, I am somewhat worried about dying from a consequence of the gene defect, more from the uncertainties of how and when. But it seems not unlikely that my week-daily bike rides bring about a much higher risk of death, including painful death, including life long severe disabilities than the defect. In this sense, I found Gilbert's slide impressive where he contrasts the images of an crashed airplane, a 9/11 skyscraper, a house destroyed by an earthquake - and a swimming pool. Statistics has it, the swimming pool is far more dangerous than any of the other. Actually, he could have included fire weapons, the hallmark of ever discussed US American freedom of citizens. According to "Freakonomics", you should be really worried if your child meets a friend whose parent have a swimming pool compared to the parents owning a fire weapon: "children are 100 times more likely to drown in a backyard pool than they are likely to die while playing with a gun."

The only problem, we are irrational beings. And as one contributor in the discussion with Gilbert mentions, the master equation in the theory of decisions (the expectation value as product of likelihood and gain) does tell us as much about the perceived (v.s. abstract) reality as the fundamental equations of quantum particles, symmetry laws, and the like: Nothing.
It hurts when you hit the floor and it does not help that Pauli's principle is responsible* for the "hardness" of the floor and your body - as you both are more than 99% nothing, space-wise.
*it is only an explanation, but this is how I mistreat principles, sometimes.
My expectation value is my_likelihood multiplied by my_gain. If you ask patients of, what we call bad and grave illnesses, their_gain might not be as negative as our_gain anticipated. Which might correspond with the fact that their_likelihood is at 100%.

Currently, I find it hard to readjust to a "realistic" perspectives on the future. Half an hour ago I had this disturbed vision that comes from a bad circulation in the retina. The awareness of bike-risk is not a day-to-day companion as the "other". And there is more routine and practice to avoid the bike-risk. The other is hard to avoid as reasons, causes, and interdependencies of PV are not (yet) researched. So, there is always room for speculation to fall in.