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I'm gonna zoom out here a little. I've been living a life that for decades has felt like slavery to what I confidently believe is an overly risk averse cultural

I'm gonna zoom out here a little. I've been living a life that for decades has felt like slavery to what I confidently believe is an overly risk averse cultural mindset, applied to economic life. I see no safe path to a life I could tolerate myself choosing. If it became clear to me, I would take longer odds of death than the American colonist in your example to break free of it, because dying is preferable to me over living in the boxes most people are eager to ensconce me in. But because of the "intolerance to unknown risks" (and the fact that I refuse to become a career criminal) there are tons of hurdles now in the way of risking my own life to succeed and all I've got left realistically is burnout and feeling shame for not being or doing X, Y, Z. So because of that, the "elephant" I'm riding is a complete behemoth. You're never going to convince me that the modern world will always be and should be so intolerant of these kinds of risks. You left behind google to work in a startup, so you've experienced something about a real economic risk if not a deadly one. Beyond that I don't know what kind of elephant you're riding on about this kind of thing but it's probably also too strong for me to expect to influence you into adopting my thoughts about risk epistemology. Possibly, precisely because they are my thoughts; they're not for you. Having taken that step back, I don't see why I need to care so much if you really want to stick to your heuristic of approximating risk confidence into a functional "knowledge" that it's 100% or 0% at the margins of the infinitesimal. That's your choice. Maybe those are good guardrails for you. I'd hope to speak as a check and balance to stop you from pressuring (whether deliberately or inadvertently) other people who feel the same way I do into these boxes, but It would be arrogant of me to assume I know best for what you should be thinking.

JetAlone 5y ago
Having this conversation, and realizing why I was digging into the position I held inspired me to look up the most dangerous occupations in my available area, looking at the statistics and contrasting them to salary, other benefits, and hurdles in the way of doing them. I see a possibility of a better life on the other side of all that.

JetAlone 5y ago

Having this conversation, and realizing why I was digging into the position I held inspired me to look up the most dangerous occupations in my available area, looking at the statistics and contrasting them to salary, other benefits, and hurdles in the way of doing them. I see a possibility of a better life on the other side of all that.