Risk is a board game by Parker Brothers that I used to play with friends, but I never mastered the strategy: something about taking over Australia early on so no one can attack you, and gaining large land masses in Russia like Kamchatka and the Okhotsk.
America does not understand the concept of risk, or has a distorted view of risk; it's evident all over the decisions people make, what we prioritize, how we spend money, etc., and it's just accepted knowledge. Is it risky to eat a diet full of fast foods that are high in salt and fat (apparently the only 2 ingredients that KFC founder Colonel Sanders divulged as part of the 11-part original recipe) yes, but we do it anyway because of that momentary gratification of mouth pleasure of the food going in and chomping down and satiating the taste buds, and billion dollar industries profit off of that misunderstanding of risk, while millions of Americans risk years, maybe decades off of their life because they consume too much of that type of food, via cancer or other types of diet-related diseases (heart, liver disease come to mind depending on if your vice is food or alcohol).
I have a fundamental bias in tolerating risk as well: often dwelling on "what if I lose money" on a stock when I should be taking every risk I can for stocks that have potential to go 10x up; even if I have 8 stocks that go to zero after I bought them (I'm looking at you, Luckin' Coffee, Virgin Galactic, Dollar General, Plug Power, and on its way there, a company I never thought I'd say this about, Target)... all I need is one stock that "decadruples up"(my term for being worth 10x its original value) and I've made up for those other stocks plus some more. So the wise bet is to actually invest more in the US Market, damn the torpedos and go for high-risk companies like Nvidia, Tesla, and (recently) Cava, Reddit, and Palantir before they made their big move. It's like Jeopardy daily double wagering: if you're more than 50% right on the Daily Doubles, it's usually correct to go all-in. It's like if you thought your odds of winning at blackjack were more than 50% (they're not)- you should always go all in.
Neil deGrasse Tyson recently went on Bill Maher's show "Real Time" (great show if you're just a casual follower of politics) and discussed human beings' inability to calculate risk... he doesn't trust humans! And I agree. It's almost impossible to calculate the odds of something happening in the future to the exact degree and then make a decision based on it. It's like you're asking every person to be an actuary and make split second decisions off the cuff. Assessing risk is in every decision we make; lately my biggest risk has been whether I've eaten enough at night to fill my stomach so I don't get up in the middle of the night hungry and have to eat to get back to sleep- but then again I don't want to overeat and gain more weight that I've put on lately. I also have to weight the risk of typing something on the Discord forum that my law school friends type and getting my opinion through versus alienating one or more of them in discussing politics.... always a difficult calculus. It's almost an overwhelming tasks as human beings to always be assessing risk, but just like the stock market, it can be fun when the rewards come in. I think there's a thrill for human beings that because we're always trying to mitigate risk, be safe, be cautious, that there's a huge rush when going against the grain and taking that big risk and have having it pay off (even if it's actually a reasonable risk to take that we didn't realize until we took that risk), as long as it's not like risking your whole life to chase grizzly bears or something (see the film "Grizzly Man," a documentary by Wernar Herzog).
So embrace risk! Take a night away from working or studying to see if a night out will refresh your body and soul! Instead of just venturing into the previews of movies and hearing about movies, actually commit to the 2-hour long (gasp! So long!) Deadpool and Wolverine movie! and damn the opportunity costs! You might feel like it's a risk well taken.
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