¹ Milan M. Ćirković points out that the Toba supereruption (~73,000 BCE) may count as a near-extinction event. The blast and subsequent winter killed off a super majority of humankind; genetic evidence suggests there were only a few thousand survivors, perhaps even less (Ambrose, 1998). Note that this event is not in our historical memory – it predates writing.

² Note that the figure 44% is for all new businesses, including small restaurants, rather than, say, dot-com start-ups.

³ A related concept is the good-story bias hypothesized in Bostrom (2001). Fictional evidence usually consists of ‘good stories’ in Bostrom’s sense. Note that not all good stories are presented as fiction.

⁴ Note that in this experiment, sparse information played the same role as cognitive business or time pressure in increasing reliance on the affect heuristic.