The benefit is that I feel better about the other years in which nothing like this has happened: it (possibly) means that things didn't happen and not just that

The benefit is that I feel better about the other years in which nothing like this has happened: it (possibly) means that things didn't happen and not just that I didn't hear about it. Whereas if I never hear about stuff (or worse, I discover stuff way after the fact) then I don't have much of a basis for knowing if there is any system at all. For instance, I don't mind getting a spam email or two when I open my email box in the morning, because then I am sure that it's working :D I don't know how sound or rational that feeling is, but I understand it.