I spend what feels like a majority of my waking hours thinking about risk. Professionally, I’ve worked in computer security for fifteen years (and software engineering more generally for longer).So my work days are filled with questions about risk: how risky is this vulnerability? How dangerous is it to launch this new feature if it hasn’t gotten a proper security review yet? How much risk is left after we do that review? And then after work, all my hobbies take place outdoors in the wilderness: backpacking, trail running, packrafting, mountaineering, canyoneering. So my hobbies are also filled with questions about risk: is it safe to cross this river here? What bear safety precautions do I need to take in this area? Is this a safe rapid to run or should I portage?

Professionals who work with risk for living — security engineers, wilderness guides, insurance adjusters, investors, etc. etc. — develop sophisticated tools and mental frameworks to help them think clearly about risk and make good decisions. But people who don’t live in these worlds can often find risk discussions hard to follow. We often use jargon that seem intuitive — words like “risk”, “exposure”, “threat”, “mitigation”, etc. — but has specific and sometimes subtle valances to in-groups.

And without training, it’s easy to fall into traps — risk does weird things to our brain, making us often not think clearly about risky situations. For example, most people feel less safe on an airplane than they do in a car, despite the fact that commercial air travel is many of orders of magnitude safer than car travel. Or: when I tell people about a trip I’m taking to Alaska, most people will ask me the risk of grizzly bears, despite the fact that hypothermia is a much more significant risk. (Bears are just more exciting than shivvering!)

So this is a series about how to think about risk. This series is a crash course, a high-level introduction to the most important concepts and risk frameworks. It’s intended for people who encounter risk from time to time and need some basic tools, but don’t want to make a deep study of it. My hope is that it’ll help you better analyze risk when it comes up for you, and also make it easier to navigate conversations with risk professionals.