the.com/risk
the toll booth between where you are and where you'd brag about being
means the possibility of loss, harm, or failure that comes attached to a course of action — the price of any outcome you can't guarantee.
from From French 'risque' and Italian 'risco' / 'rischio,' words that surface in the 1600s. The deeper root is uncertain and contested: a long-favored guess traces it to the Latin 'resecare,' to cut off (as in a danger that cuts), while another popular theory points to a Greek nautical word for a cliff or reef — the hidden rock a ship might strike. Fittingly, the term seems born among merchants and sailors weighing whether to send a cargo across dangerous water.
- word origin
- likely from Italian sailors meaning 'to dare the cliffs'
- brain chemistry
- dopamine fires hardest on the gamble, not the win
- survival math
- every ancestor who never risked anything died childless
- insurance trick
- entire industry exists to sell your fear back to you
- loss aversion
- losing 100 hurts twice as much as winning 100
chernobyl nuclear disaster — 1986 explosion in ukraine created 1000-year exclusion zone, 4000+ deaths
deep water horizon spill — 2010 gulf of mexico oil rig explosion leaked 4.9 million barrels