Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
By most accounts and metrics, we in modern Western nations live in the wealthiest, safest society ever. We have some of the broadest and strongest social "safety nets" in history, and lower inequality than most large societies of the past. Thus, the downsides to risk-taking are presumably the lowest ever; never has "the price of failure" been so low.
So, why then, do we seem to be some of the most risk-averse people ever? Why do we appear to be more terrified of failure than our ancestors who were one bad harvest away from starvation?
(I wonder about this, because it seems to me to be a factor in our modern allergy to authority, specifically how scared people seem to be at the idea of stepping up and taking charge of something.)
Read a similar thread in hackernews or I might be just Mandela effecting myself, anyways.
I think the most convincing (to me) answer was along the lines of "Having less to lose, is precisely that which make the risk reward ratio so high". You make that equation more top heavy and the ratio goes down. One can argue that modernity allows for a more denominator heavy average outcome, but that's up in the air when you factor in probability.
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