Is this the reverse of the Gambler's Fallacy? Instead of "The numbers haven't hit in a while, therefore they're going to hit soon." it's "The numbers haven't hit yet, therefore they're never gonna hit."

Also known as complacency. Working in a woodshop, one of the things you are most vulnerable to is failing to respect the danger you're in. This is why many experienced woodworkers have been injured by e.g. a table saw - you stop being as careful after such long exposure.

A related thing is normalization of deviance. You start removing safety because you see nothing bad happened before, until you are at a point where almost no safety rules are respected anymore. You can see this a lot in construction videos.

Yup, complacency can kill you.

In this case [0], a skydiver forgot to put on his parachute...

https://reverentialramblings.com/2018/08/15/the-skydiver-who...

Oh man, that's terrible. I can certainly understand how someone without a checklist that is verified by two people can do that, especially if you have a backpack on to mask the fact that the parachute is missing.

Many times if I wear a tight jacket in the car, I forget to put my seat belt on, because I unconsciously mistake the pressure of the jacket for the seatbelt's, even though putting on a seat belt is usually the first thing I do.

Poor guy.

I generally take off my jacket before driving for that very reason.

Luckily newer cars won't stop beeping if you forget your seatbelt, so the problem is mitigated. Not so for parachutes, apparently.

To be honest, I never wear a parachute when driving!

Better not drive close to cliffs then!

Wow, that's terrifying and a good cautionary tale.

Also, when I read

> I’m hoping you can you forgive me as a minister of religion for likening this story to a spiritual cautionary tale. Yes, we do need to live each day as if it might be our last.

I thought, "Hmm, sounds adventist", and sure enough :-)

And why pilots traditionally work from checklists, even if they've done the process thousands of times.

That only applies if you are updating priors. In this case the odds are fixed, the GP is correct.

The odds of a rocking accident are known and fixed?

Probably not. But they aren't affected by the previous N climbs, at least as described by GP post. They are considering a fixed odds event, and the probability of (bad thing happens) over a sample path through time. That's not the turkey fallacy.

In other words , the difference between the turkey and the climber is the climber knows the odds (at least nominally) , and it’s important .

All this reminds me of “if you are immortal and cannot be harmed, what are the odds of getting ‘stuck’?” I’d venture 100%.

Surely sometime about the turkey getting fatter each time complicates this example.

hows yesterday's tree impacting today's?