9 ms·

The privilege of risk

107 points by fs111 9y ago

colemannugent 9y ago
Site looks like it's down, here's the archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20171011011443/http://blog.edtechie.net/asides/the-privilege-of-risk/ https://web.archive.org/web/20171011011443/http://blog.edtec...
Tomminn 9y ago
I remember talking to a friend, who was stressed about the risk in her next career move, and I said: "Realistically, the worst case scenario is that you have to move back in with your parents for a while, and I'm pretty sure they'd be stoked to have you back." And she just burst out laughing. Because it had never occurred to her that that is exactly the limit of how much it was possible for her to materially suffer.
- maccard 9y ago
  I feel like you're totally missing the point here. Not everyone can move back in with their parents for a while, I certainly can't. Despite earning an above average salary (nothing in comparison to bay area) in the UK, I still couldn't afford to just drop my job, and take a year to try and earn some money, I'd starve to death.
  - batiudrami 9y ago
    I think you're both making the same point :)
    - maccard 9y ago
      We are, however I don't think the parent was clear enough! (given that I read the comment 4 times and missed what he was saying)
  - Tomminn 9y ago
    That is my point. You, on the other hand, are someone who has to deal with actual downside risk.
    - maccard 9y ago
      I re read your comment and it totally went over my head three or four times last night.
  - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
    Exactly, that's why it is being referred to as "privilege" and not "something every person in the world has the option of doing".
- tempYeez 9y ago
  Yeh I think this is exact point. Your friend didn't even understand the amount of privilege middle america has that they could move back home or have a parent pay for rent. My parent couldn't even afford a plane ticket back home little less moving back into a 3brd apartment that already has 5 people. If a poor person or immigrant fails you could easily become homeless. If a middle american fails you get 3 meals a day on a couch.
colemannugent 9y ago
Risk becomes a vehicle by which privilege reinforces itself – only the privileged can take risks and only risk is rewarded. Which is not to say we should all be cautious and people or institutions should never venture to do unusual things. I agree with what the author is trying to say here, but disagree with the second part of the first sentence. Everyone can take risks, and risk is not the only factor that determines reward. Anyone can take risks, but me investing half my net worth into a company is fundamentally different than Elon Musk throwing half of his into a business venture. While we both would essentially be betting the same 50%, taking 50% from me might put me into financial hardship while Musk, though I'm sure he would be very upset about it, would not struggle to make ends meet. Say both of our 50% bets paid off and we made a 5x return on investment, that would immediately put me into a higher tier of quality of life, while Musk is still just another billionaire. In this example I, the comparatively less privileged, have far more to gain than the more privileged Musk. From a purely financial standpoint Musk seems to come out better in terms of risk to reward ratio, but there is more than just money at play in our internal risk evaluation strategies.
- glhaynes 9y ago
  It seems like you're agreeing with what's being quoted: risk of any sort is, well, riskier (in many cases, impossible) for the unprivileged. Maybe I'm misreading you or the quoted part.
  - oconnor663 9y ago
    I was about to say the same, but on a second reading the language is really extreme: > only the privileged can take risks I guess that could be true if we take a position like "everyone is privileged to some degree", but that's not really what anyone means when they say "the privileged", and it would make the whole line meaningless anyway.
    - colemannugent 9y ago
      This is what I was disagreeing with. People are allowed to take risks who are not part of "the privileged", else we wouldn't have terms like "self-made millionaire".
dvt 9y ago
Risk becomes a vehicle by which privilege reinforces itself – only the privileged can take risks and only risk is rewarded. This is patently untrue. My parents emigrated to the States in 1997 (from the post-Communist Romania) with two briefcases, two kids, and $2,000 -- hardly privileged. After their Visas expired, we technically had illegal immigrant status (after a few thousand dollars in lawyer fees and many years, we paid a fine and were eventually naturalized in 2008). We won the Visa lottery, yes, but I know of immigrants that did not and still found a way to citizenship. My parents now own a $1M house in Southern California, one of my uncles (also emigrated to the US in the 90s) owns his own business. He doesn't even have a college degree. It wasn't easy getting here (we recently celebrated 20 years of America): my college-educated parents had to work menial jobs like washing Target toilets, cleaning houses, and flooring and construction. The gain for myself and my sister, our cousins, and some day hopefully my kids -- is immeasurable. The risk, even moreso. I know of Romanians that swam the Danube (pre-1989) and were shot at and imprisoned. The risk of freedom was worth it. Everyone can take risks. Investing $10,000 and 6 months of your life in a startup is not ruin-inducing. And perpetrating this kind of argument is, imo, doing a disservice to people that are on the fence. Obviously, I don't have the same kind of opportunities as a rich trust-fund kid from Manhattan. But I'll be damned if I don't try. I recently quit my cozy six-figure job in ad-tech to try and bring some of my ideas to fruition. Will I fail? The odds are stacked against me -- I've failed before and failing sucks. The purpose of life is not wallowing in self-pity, but rising above the adversity. I leave you with this quite by Nassim Taleb[1]: Risk takers can be socially unpredictable people. Freedom is always associated with risk taking, whether it led to it or came from it. You take risks, you feel part of history. And risk takers take risks because it is in their nature to be wild animals. [1] https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-legally-own-another-person-4145a1802bf6 https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-legally-own-another-person...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- SubiculumCode 9y ago
  The quoted rule would have been better stated in terms of frequency, like: Risk becomes a vehicle by which privilege reinforces itself – for the most part, only the privileged can take risks, and for the most part, only risk is rewarded. There is substantial evidence in support of this thesis, from decades of research in economic mobility. Your story of success is only a single data point in answering this question.
summerdown2 9y ago
I have the same feeling when I hear politicians here in the UK say that they've had to make "tough decisions." Always the part being unsaid is "tough on who?"
hkmurakami 9y ago
>deification of risk This is the crux of the problem, and the sooner we can get away from this, the better off we will be. Risk is fine. Take it if it makes sense for you. But don't glorify it and don't worship it.
- dvt 9y ago
  Why not? Courage (the motivator of risk) has been a virtue since the dawn of humanity.
  - fleitz 9y ago
    Fortune favours the bold.
- bobbygoodlatte 9y ago
  Agreed. I think Silicon Valley has an unhealthy culture of driving folks towards taking un-necessary risk. We glorify "hustling" non-stop, and overlook how destructive that advice can be to individuals
Tycho 9y ago
We need people to take risks with their personal wealth. When the risk pays off, there is generally a benefit for the rest of society. When the venture fails, the rest of society is generally unaffected. When no-one takes risks, progress stagnates.
creatrixcordis 9y ago
Of course privilege affords you a cushion for many things, not only taking risks. That happens in any environment since "money" correlates to a safety net which could translate into the ability to take time to work on what you want. Some countries which have more supporting social systems also support more risk taking, because if the risk taking doesn't work out, the social system will support you to your next career change or re-education programs will let you shift to another field you are interested in. It is much easier in these countries to stop working in your current field and shift to another field. Since education is payed by the state. In the US the divide between the risk takers and the stable situation agents can't only be associated with wealthy support network(family). Since peoples values and levels of what comfort is can vary dramatically. So dvts example actually illustrates this quite strongly. People from a third world country have put up with different levels of poverty or non-access to comforts, so what they consider risks or comforts are different than what people in first world countries consider risks and comforts. The other thing is that people that live with more risks and are brought up in risky environments are more comfortable with taking risks. Success in an immigration story is dependent on many factors, hard work and a lot of luck.
chaostheory 9y ago
> only the privileged can take risks and only risk is rewarded. I strongly disagree with this. Anyone can take a risk. This is embodied best by the people crossing the Southern US border where they risk their lives and most if not all of their net worth before they even set foot on US soil. While my experience wasn't nearly as hard, I can relate since I was an illegal alien for years until college. The difference between the privileged and everyone else is the cost of risk. They can afford to take risks with bigger rewards and they can afford to take risks more often. Consequently they are also more inclined to take risks.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  Also how many are successful at the risk. It it's like gambling or investment, if you're poor you can probably invest once, va banque. If you're rich, you can invest many times with smaller stakes and more likely not bust.
bactrian 9y ago
Privilege is wealth. The idea that there are a number of privileges is a lie people who have wealth tell. If you have money, you have privilege. If you don't, you don't. Everything else is but a symptom.
ballenf 9y ago
I've always puzzled at Jesus' parable of the talents: > ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ 23 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 24 He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ 26 But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? 27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25%3A14-30&version=ESV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25%3A14... The condemnation of the final recipient of the investment is so incredibly unexpected and seemingly out of character. Not only did Jesus reward risk-taking but he condemned the absence thereof. I don't really know what to make of the lesson, but it certainly presents a different angle than what I would presume to be the "Christian" approach to life.
- Terr_ 9y ago
  The most charitable interpretation I can think of (as an agnostic) is that the servant who took no risks with their investment is like a person who avoids chances to do good because they are afraid to "lose" under the existing system of Jewish religious rules. An example of this is in the parable of the Good Samaritan, where ostensibly-virtuous people ignore the victim, because to intervene would make them ritually-unclean. Another case would be where Jesus seems unafraid to mingle with beggars and prostitutes, to the confusion and consternation of other religious figures at the time. From a modern standpoint, we do not have many of those rules drilled into us, so the "risk of having a net increase in sin" simply isn't on our radar. For example, if someone is drowning we think nothing about which hand we use to pull that person from the water.
  - slededit 9y ago
    Digging the hole and hiding 80 lbs of silver (what a talent was) would have been more work than just depositing it with the bank. So his aversion to loss caused him to expend more effort for a worse outcome.
relyio 9y ago
>Risk becomes a vehicle by which privilege reinforces itself – only the privileged can take risks and only risk is rewarded. That is a pretty absurd leap to take. By its very own definition, there is no guaranteed pay-off yielded by risk-taking. And by risk-taking, I mean an individual going off the beaten, risk-minimal, path. In this economy, it is starting a company or joining an early one. So yes, of course, that "risk" is rewarded. But only some of the time for some of the people and that alone makes it insufficient to back the thesis that "Risk becomes a vehicle by which privilege reinforces itself". If richer folks are able to go off that beaten path more easily or often, that is only because there "risk-taking" is less risky (amortized) for them than for anyone else. But again, that makes the reward neither guaranteed, systematic or easier to obtain.
drawkbox 9y ago
The world is somewhat a free to play game where people start in various stages of the game in terms of level, currency and powers. The really high up players who enter at that level are playing a different type of game because they are exponentially more powerful and have more resources to take on bigger battles and losses aren't as impactful but victories are. Risk is low and game on! Other players start out gold farming and have to be careful and strategic but they can get taken out by a random small event too costly for their level of resources and their world has ended. Risk was too high but way smaller than the risk for the high up player, game over. Risk levels vary at all startups/companies really. The investor is taking a risk but that is one of ten deals, but has wealth to fall back on and probably owns the building. The executives are taking risks but have a golden parachute. The early employees are taking a risk but also pretty compensated, if they make it. The employees after are taking little risk but have the most to lose on someone else's risk and the least to gain. The risk should be rewarded as it can bring others wealth but the wealthy risk taker is a high up player in the "free to play" game with less to lose overall in the leaderboards.
yoyar 9y ago
Fuck off with this priveledge bullshit.
fleitz 9y ago
There's always going to be someone with a shit situation worse than yours. Using the better situations of others to justify your lack of risk taking is just lame. If you don't want to take risks, don't. There's plenty of risk taking that didn't pay off.
dwaltrip 9y ago
This is the Matthew principle in action (a.k.a the power law or Pareto distribution). In this particular example, powerful positive feedback loops are at work. This stuff is everywhere -- from tiny microscopic processes, to most skill-based human endeavors, all the way up to many grand cosmological dynamics. Now, humans are not lifeless particles, and our awareness gives us the ability to tweak the systems in which we operate, to a certain degree. But we can't entirely eliminate the existence of power law distributions and positive feedback loops. We instead must work to mitigate and dampen some of the less desirable effects. We should be able to safely reduce the extremities of some of these distributions, as well as shifting entire curves further along one axis, bringing increased benefits to all. Note: the above comment includes some new conceptual articulations & evolutions for me. Thoughtful feedback/ responses are kindly appreciated.

107 points by fs111 9y ago

Site looks like it's down, here's the archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20171011011443/http://blog.edtechie.net/asides/the-privilege-of-risk/ https://web.archive.org/web/20171011011443/http://blog.edtec...

Tomminn 9y ago

I remember talking to a friend, who was stressed about the risk in her next career move, and I said: "Realistically, the worst case scenario is that you have to move back in with your parents for a while, and I'm pretty sure they'd be stoked to have you back." And she just burst out laughing. Because it had never occurred to her that that is exactly the limit of how much it was possible for her to materially suffer.

maccard 9y ago
I feel like you're totally missing the point here. Not everyone can move back in with their parents for a while, I certainly can't. Despite earning an above average salary (nothing in comparison to bay area) in the UK, I still couldn't afford to just drop my job, and take a year to try and earn some money, I'd starve to death.
- batiudrami 9y ago
  I think you're both making the same point :)
  - maccard 9y ago
    We are, however I don't think the parent was clear enough! (given that I read the comment 4 times and missed what he was saying)
- Tomminn 9y ago
  That is my point. You, on the other hand, are someone who has to deal with actual downside risk.
  - maccard 9y ago
    I re read your comment and it totally went over my head three or four times last night.
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago
  Exactly, that's why it is being referred to as "privilege" and not "something every person in the world has the option of doing".
tempYeez 9y ago
Yeh I think this is exact point. Your friend didn't even understand the amount of privilege middle america has that they could move back home or have a parent pay for rent. My parent couldn't even afford a plane ticket back home little less moving back into a 3brd apartment that already has 5 people. If a poor person or immigrant fails you could easily become homeless. If a middle american fails you get 3 meals a day on a couch.

colemannugent 9y ago

Risk becomes a vehicle by which privilege reinforces itself – only the privileged can take risks and only risk is rewarded. Which is not to say we should all be cautious and people or institutions should never venture to do unusual things. I agree with what the author is trying to say here, but disagree with the second part of the first sentence. Everyone can take risks, and risk is not the only factor that determines reward. Anyone can take risks, but me investing half my net worth into a company is fundamentally different than Elon Musk throwing half of his into a business venture. While we both would essentially be betting the same 50%, taking 50% from me might put me into financial hardship while Musk, though I'm sure he would be very upset about it, would not struggle to make ends meet. Say both of our 50% bets paid off and we made a 5x return on investment, that would immediately put me into a higher tier of quality of life, while Musk is still just another billionaire. In this example I, the comparatively less privileged, have far more to gain than the more privileged Musk. From a purely financial standpoint Musk seems to come out better in terms of risk to reward ratio, but there is more than just money at play in our internal risk evaluation strategies.

glhaynes 9y ago
It seems like you're agreeing with what's being quoted: risk of any sort is, well, riskier (in many cases, impossible) for the unprivileged. Maybe I'm misreading you or the quoted part.
- oconnor663 9y ago
  I was about to say the same, but on a second reading the language is really extreme: > only the privileged can take risks I guess that could be true if we take a position like "everyone is privileged to some degree", but that's not really what anyone means when they say "the privileged", and it would make the whole line meaningless anyway.
  - colemannugent 9y ago
    This is what I was disagreeing with. People are allowed to take risks who are not part of "the privileged", else we wouldn't have terms like "self-made millionaire".

dvt 9y ago

Risk becomes a vehicle by which privilege reinforces itself – only the privileged can take risks and only risk is rewarded. This is patently untrue. My parents emigrated to the States in 1997 (from the post-Communist Romania) with two briefcases, two kids, and $2,000 -- hardly privileged. After their Visas expired, we technically had illegal immigrant status (after a few thousand dollars in lawyer fees and many years, we paid a fine and were eventually naturalized in 2008). We won the Visa lottery, yes, but I know of immigrants that did not and still found a way to citizenship. My parents now own a $1M house in Southern California, one of my uncles (also emigrated to the US in the 90s) owns his own business. He doesn't even have a college degree. It wasn't easy getting here (we recently celebrated 20 years of America): my college-educated parents had to work menial jobs like washing Target toilets, cleaning houses, and flooring and construction. The gain for myself and my sister, our cousins, and some day hopefully my kids -- is immeasurable. The risk, even moreso. I know of Romanians that swam the Danube (pre-1989) and were shot at and imprisoned. The risk of freedom was worth it. Everyone can take risks. Investing $10,000 and 6 months of your life in a startup is not ruin-inducing. And perpetrating this kind of argument is, imo, doing a disservice to people that are on the fence. Obviously, I don't have the same kind of opportunities as a rich trust-fund kid from Manhattan. But I'll be damned if I don't try. I recently quit my cozy six-figure job in ad-tech to try and bring some of my ideas to fruition. Will I fail? The odds are stacked against me -- I've failed before and failing sucks. The purpose of life is not wallowing in self-pity, but rising above the adversity. I leave you with this quite by Nassim Taleb[1]: Risk takers can be socially unpredictable people. Freedom is always associated with risk taking, whether it led to it or came from it. You take risks, you feel part of history. And risk takers take risks because it is in their nature to be wild animals. [1] https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-legally-own-another-person-4145a1802bf6 https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-legally-own-another-person...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
SubiculumCode 9y ago
The quoted rule would have been better stated in terms of frequency, like: Risk becomes a vehicle by which privilege reinforces itself – for the most part, only the privileged can take risks, and for the most part, only risk is rewarded. There is substantial evidence in support of this thesis, from decades of research in economic mobility. Your story of success is only a single data point in answering this question.

summerdown2 9y ago

I have the same feeling when I hear politicians here in the UK say that they've had to make "tough decisions." Always the part being unsaid is "tough on who?"

hkmurakami 9y ago

>deification of risk This is the crux of the problem, and the sooner we can get away from this, the better off we will be. Risk is fine. Take it if it makes sense for you. But don't glorify it and don't worship it.

dvt 9y ago
Why not? Courage (the motivator of risk) has been a virtue since the dawn of humanity.
- fleitz 9y ago
  Fortune favours the bold.
bobbygoodlatte 9y ago
Agreed. I think Silicon Valley has an unhealthy culture of driving folks towards taking un-necessary risk. We glorify "hustling" non-stop, and overlook how destructive that advice can be to individuals

Tycho 9y ago

We need people to take risks with their personal wealth. When the risk pays off, there is generally a benefit for the rest of society. When the venture fails, the rest of society is generally unaffected. When no-one takes risks, progress stagnates.

creatrixcordis 9y ago

Of course privilege affords you a cushion for many things, not only taking risks. That happens in any environment since "money" correlates to a safety net which could translate into the ability to take time to work on what you want. Some countries which have more supporting social systems also support more risk taking, because if the risk taking doesn't work out, the social system will support you to your next career change or re-education programs will let you shift to another field you are interested in. It is much easier in these countries to stop working in your current field and shift to another field. Since education is payed by the state. In the US the divide between the risk takers and the stable situation agents can't only be associated with wealthy support network(family). Since peoples values and levels of what comfort is can vary dramatically. So dvts example actually illustrates this quite strongly. People from a third world country have put up with different levels of poverty or non-access to comforts, so what they consider risks or comforts are different than what people in first world countries consider risks and comforts. The other thing is that people that live with more risks and are brought up in risky environments are more comfortable with taking risks. Success in an immigration story is dependent on many factors, hard work and a lot of luck.

chaostheory 9y ago

> only the privileged can take risks and only risk is rewarded. I strongly disagree with this. Anyone can take a risk. This is embodied best by the people crossing the Southern US border where they risk their lives and most if not all of their net worth before they even set foot on US soil. While my experience wasn't nearly as hard, I can relate since I was an illegal alien for years until college. The difference between the privileged and everyone else is the cost of risk. They can afford to take risks with bigger rewards and they can afford to take risks more often. Consequently they are also more inclined to take risks.

AstralStorm 9y ago
Also how many are successful at the risk. It it's like gambling or investment, if you're poor you can probably invest once, va banque. If you're rich, you can invest many times with smaller stakes and more likely not bust.

bactrian 9y ago

Privilege is wealth. The idea that there are a number of privileges is a lie people who have wealth tell. If you have money, you have privilege. If you don't, you don't. Everything else is but a symptom.

ballenf 9y ago

I've always puzzled at Jesus' parable of the talents: > ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ 23 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 24 He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ 26 But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? 27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25%3A14-30&version=ESV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25%3A14... The condemnation of the final recipient of the investment is so incredibly unexpected and seemingly out of character. Not only did Jesus reward risk-taking but he condemned the absence thereof. I don't really know what to make of the lesson, but it certainly presents a different angle than what I would presume to be the "Christian" approach to life.

Terr_ 9y ago
The most charitable interpretation I can think of (as an agnostic) is that the servant who took no risks with their investment is like a person who avoids chances to do good because they are afraid to "lose" under the existing system of Jewish religious rules. An example of this is in the parable of the Good Samaritan, where ostensibly-virtuous people ignore the victim, because to intervene would make them ritually-unclean. Another case would be where Jesus seems unafraid to mingle with beggars and prostitutes, to the confusion and consternation of other religious figures at the time. From a modern standpoint, we do not have many of those rules drilled into us, so the "risk of having a net increase in sin" simply isn't on our radar. For example, if someone is drowning we think nothing about which hand we use to pull that person from the water.
- slededit 9y ago
  Digging the hole and hiding 80 lbs of silver (what a talent was) would have been more work than just depositing it with the bank. So his aversion to loss caused him to expend more effort for a worse outcome.

relyio 9y ago

>Risk becomes a vehicle by which privilege reinforces itself – only the privileged can take risks and only risk is rewarded. That is a pretty absurd leap to take. By its very own definition, there is no guaranteed pay-off yielded by risk-taking. And by risk-taking, I mean an individual going off the beaten, risk-minimal, path. In this economy, it is starting a company or joining an early one. So yes, of course, that "risk" is rewarded. But only some of the time for some of the people and that alone makes it insufficient to back the thesis that "Risk becomes a vehicle by which privilege reinforces itself". If richer folks are able to go off that beaten path more easily or often, that is only because there "risk-taking" is less risky (amortized) for them than for anyone else. But again, that makes the reward neither guaranteed, systematic or easier to obtain.

drawkbox 9y ago

The world is somewhat a free to play game where people start in various stages of the game in terms of level, currency and powers. The really high up players who enter at that level are playing a different type of game because they are exponentially more powerful and have more resources to take on bigger battles and losses aren't as impactful but victories are. Risk is low and game on! Other players start out gold farming and have to be careful and strategic but they can get taken out by a random small event too costly for their level of resources and their world has ended. Risk was too high but way smaller than the risk for the high up player, game over. Risk levels vary at all startups/companies really. The investor is taking a risk but that is one of ten deals, but has wealth to fall back on and probably owns the building. The executives are taking risks but have a golden parachute. The early employees are taking a risk but also pretty compensated, if they make it. The employees after are taking little risk but have the most to lose on someone else's risk and the least to gain. The risk should be rewarded as it can bring others wealth but the wealthy risk taker is a high up player in the "free to play" game with less to lose overall in the leaderboards.

yoyar 9y ago

Fuck off with this priveledge bullshit.

fleitz 9y ago

There's always going to be someone with a shit situation worse than yours. Using the better situations of others to justify your lack of risk taking is just lame. If you don't want to take risks, don't. There's plenty of risk taking that didn't pay off.

dwaltrip 9y ago

This is the Matthew principle in action (a.k.a the power law or Pareto distribution). In this particular example, powerful positive feedback loops are at work. This stuff is everywhere -- from tiny microscopic processes, to most skill-based human endeavors, all the way up to many grand cosmological dynamics. Now, humans are not lifeless particles, and our awareness gives us the ability to tweak the systems in which we operate, to a certain degree. But we can't entirely eliminate the existence of power law distributions and positive feedback loops. We instead must work to mitigate and dampen some of the less desirable effects. We should be able to safely reduce the extremities of some of these distributions, as well as shifting entire curves further along one axis, bringing increased benefits to all. Note: the above comment includes some new conceptual articulations & evolutions for me. Thoughtful feedback/ responses are kindly appreciated.