Risk Aversion?

How risk averse are you?. Or do you enjoy taking risks on a regular basis?

I find that I am both. I have a heightened awareness of all the things that could go wrong, and am ultra careful in everything I do, but couldn't live without taking calculated risks.

I took the London underground train twice this week, at a time when the threat from terror attacks is high. Both times I had to change at one of the biggest and busiest stations, at rush hour. I know that the chances of something happening are very small. Nevertheless it COULD happen. Also, the London tube is a very visceral and harem scarem ride. The trains run fast on steel rails through winding tunnels and rapid dips and elevations. The carriages shake and rattle as you speed under the city. But I love it in a way. It's pretty exciting.

I also started flying again recently and really enjoyed my two trips to France. Taking risks helps us to release pressure and lessen worry, because the more you bottle up fear the more fear it creates internally. It is possible to minimize risk to the point where very little can go wrong. But that isn't really living. We have to take risks in order to feel truly alive. Sometimes I take midnight walks in my neighbourhood. One time two big guys walked past me and one of them said "I could have you but I can't be bothered." I just ignored them and walked on by. Does it matter if I mentioned they were black? That's okay. I still like black people.

So yes. I am risk averse but I choose my moments and try and just do what I want to do. It's a delicate balance between security and insecurity. I know there are real risk-freaks who do the craziest stuff for kicks. But then my whole life is a blind leap of Faith into the abyss at times. I want to enjoy life to the fullest but also want to survive for as long as possible. I think it's best to kind of be attentive to the moment and be totally involved with what you're doing, so that everything is a kind of blur. It doesn't help to be constantly anxious and overly-tuned into worry about all the variables that you cannot control. Just focus on what you can affect positively and skilfully in your environment. Stay conscious but kind of let it all go at the same time. Small animals in the wild seem to have very little fear from moment to moment. As a human, it serves us well to reduce the fear of death, and in some sense learn to live like the wild beast who lives free to the very last. Better to live one year as a lion than ten as a mouse...

 

If I'm understanding correctly, taking a train and walking past black people is risky?

 

I'm very risk averse now, something changed for me on a deep level when I became a parent. I have this primal drive now to stay alive. When I was a teen and in my twenties I was wild and spontaneous and up for literally anything. I liked the feeling of living just thisclose to death. Now I lie awake at night and wonder what the chances are of that tree limb that hangs over the roof falling and killing me lol. Sleeping literally scares me.

I'm trying to be better about it though and trying to get past letting my anxiety run my life. but I also feel I took enough chances when I was younger and had enough crazy experiences that I think i'm okay being a little bit boring and fearful now. And when my child is grown I have a feeling i'll go back to embracing my adventurous side again and i'll be a crazy older lady. I'm just taking a little breather in the in between time.

 

Also statistically flying is much safer than driving a car. Even though i'm a scaredy cat now i still love flying

 

Yes to some degree. I'm not trying to make it sound like I'm a great risk-taker, because I'm not. I'm a combination of timid and fearless. It's knowing that however small the chances, something horrific COULD happen to you. You could get raped or attacked. London is practically just waiting for another terrorist attack. If this happens, someone somewhere could get seriously hurt or worse. And yes, young black men in London do have an angsty disposition. Look at them wrong and things can get heavy. And don't go calling me racist. I've probably had more black friends and been around more black people than most on this forum. Anyway, I think you're being a little facetious.

 

I don't much like cars or motorways either.

 

Its a bit of a silly comparison though, a comparison that doesnt really mean anything

Weekday peak hour in the US mainland, what do you have, 50/60 million cars on the road. What would happen if you had 50 million commercial jets in the same area doing 10 times the speed cars do, how many accidents would you have

Or alternatively, if no one drove cars, every one took buses, 50 people to a bus, so weekday peak hour you have only 1 million buses on the road over the entire US mainland, how many accidents would you not have? Number of fatalities per miles travelled would be similar to jetliners

With cars, for some reason we accept travelling down a highway 50 miles per hour with another vehicle going the opposite direction with as little as 2 feet seperation. With planes under 1/2 mile horizontally is considered a near miss. Jetliners travel roughly ten times the speed cars do on open highways, 2600 ft in 1/2 mile, divide by ten and the same standard that applied to planes if applied to cars travelling on open highways means there would be no highways where cars were allowed to travel within 260 feet of each other

 

I embrace chaos. Sometimes, I take walks. Sometimes, on my walks, I see black people. It makes me pretty nervous but I still leave my house anyway, Occasionally, I take public transit. Once in a while, I even cross the street, but get this--I don't always use the crosswalk!!!!!

Yeah, I guess you could say I live dangerously.

 

I used to get very bad panic attacks. I've been in some very vulnerable situations in my life. I'm trying to get back into living a normal full life now. If you don't feel fear you are insane.

 

I was about to say I don't do anything risky, until I realized I was disappointed because the beach hazard warning ends tomorrow night. I won't be able to take part in the bigger waves this weekend

 

I just live in a place where there aren't too many risks. I sometimes wonder about far away places where you must have to deal with the most peculiar things going around in your head all of the time. Peking orders on levels that go beyond the pale of what is even considered normalcy to me.

I'd say most everyone I've ever known is extremely risk averse. It's like we go through life with the sole purpose of avoiding risks, actually. Avoiding the risk perhaps. It has been quite harrowing for me, people throwing objects and threatening to kill each other over risks they're trying to avoid, supposedly. One wonders.

I am risk averse but I'm also reckless. I don't have much of a life, really. I don't do anything immediately dangerous, nothing that could kill me, but I don't always take things very seriously, either.

 

Yeah me too but this over-avoidance of risk can cause an intolerable pressure. It's a form of self-cherishing that in Buddhism is something to be got over. Sometimes we need a scare. In the same way as watching a horror film can be cathartic. Fortune favours the brave, as they say.

 

I feel like Evel Knievel compared to yall.

 

i think i have a pretty healthy balance. i don't live in fear by any means, but i also don't do anything overtly stupid. well, not too many overtly stupid things anyway.

i'm sure you could find ways to make driving safer or flying more dangerous if you really wanted to. i always assumed the "flying is safer than driving" statistics were based on the number of injuries per person doing each thing though, which is a pretty legitimate measurement in my opinion.

 

I'm not a risk taker, at all. But, I married one. So, I live vicariously through him.

He has helped me get over some irrational fears. A lot of risk avoidance comes from irrational fears...''what if'' thinking and all that.

 

i have serious anxiety issues, and thus unusually high lack of tolerance for optional personal or even needless shared risk.
this is part of why i continue to avoid involvement in business, among other things, but have strong motivations about the kind of world we all have to live in and how we make it so.

 

^ this (the anxiety

That's how I feel in this present moment. But I wasn't always this way, nor might I continue this way. Life sometimes forces you to take risks, other times you might just crave it. I think calculated risks makes a lot of sense... when possible.

 

Sounds risky? My heart just jumped, I'll give it a go. come at me bro!

 

A tad old, but the easiest study I could find, 2000 to 2009, I doubt these kind of figures have changed that much

http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~ipsavage/436.pdf

Deaths per billion passenger miles

Riding a motorcycle 212.57
Driving or passenger in a car or light truck 7.28
Passenger on a local ferryboat 3.17
Passenger on commuter rail and Amtrak 0.43
Passenger on urban mass transit rail (2002-2009) 0.24
Passenger on a bus (holding more than 10 passengers (transit, inter-city, school, charter) 0.11
Passenger on commercial aviation 0.07

Now all of that is worked out divided by distance travelled, and that way planes are only marginally safer than trains and buses

If instead you worked it out divided by time spent (say billion passenger hours) in the moving vehicle, trains and buses would come out safer