I just had to take an online security course, and it didn't use the word "dangerous" at all. Instead, it talked about "risk" and "threat."
"Threat" is all the bad things that could happen to you, from getting a paper cut to being killed by a suicide bomber. You can't change a threat. It exists.
"Risk" is the likelihood of any of those bad things actually happening. There's a lot you can do to affect your risk level, like crossing the street to the lighted side to avoid creepy shapes in the darkness (an example the course was fond of).
So I would probably think of "dangerous" as a combination of threat and risk -- the actual probability of something bad, and how bad it might be. There are an awful lot of things that are high threat, but negligible risk -- which makes them negligible dangers.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
"Threat" is all the bad things that could happen to you, from getting a paper cut to being killed by a suicide bomber. You can't change a threat. It exists.
"Risk" is the likelihood of any of those bad things actually happening. There's a lot you can do to affect your risk level, like crossing the street to the lighted side to avoid creepy shapes in the darkness (an example the course was fond of).
So I would probably think of "dangerous" as a combination of threat and risk -- the actual probability of something bad, and how bad it might be. There are an awful lot of things that are high threat, but negligible risk -- which makes them negligible dangers.