This post reads as much too anecdotal to be a top-level post. Here’s how I think that it could be improved:
I’m currently reading your post as (treating risk-prone/risk-averse as a continuum) “unless you see yourself to be considerably risk-prone already, you should adjust towards being more risk-prone.” You haven’t really answered the question “which areas are humans (in general) risk-averse, and why is this risk-aversion unjustified by an accounting of terminal utility generated/lost by success/failure?”, and I think that having that data would be very useful.
I’ll second including discussion of different areas in which humans are more and less risk-averse.
I work in a heavily risk-averse field, and I find that hesitation due to fear of failure has become ingrained in me. I used to be much more spontaneous. I’m still willing to sound like an idiot, which is good, but it’s a lot harder for me to propose actions that could result in loss or damage to expensive public property, even if I really think the probability is heavily in favor of learning without loss or damage.
This post reads as much too anecdotal to be a top-level post. Here’s how I think that it could be improved:
I’m currently reading your post as (treating risk-prone/risk-averse as a continuum) “unless you see yourself to be considerably risk-prone already, you should adjust towards being more risk-prone.” You haven’t really answered the question “which areas are humans (in general) risk-averse, and why is this risk-aversion unjustified by an accounting of terminal utility generated/lost by success/failure?”, and I think that having that data would be very useful.
I’ll second including discussion of different areas in which humans are more and less risk-averse.
I work in a heavily risk-averse field, and I find that hesitation due to fear of failure has become ingrained in me. I used to be much more spontaneous. I’m still willing to sound like an idiot, which is good, but it’s a lot harder for me to propose actions that could result in loss or damage to expensive public property, even if I really think the probability is heavily in favor of learning without loss or damage.