Categorical risk

We often consider and discuss risk as though certain items, actions, or modes of operation fall into a category called “risky” or “dangerous.”

Consuming tobacco or alcohol is dangerous. Starting a business is risky. Venomous snakes are dangerous. Skydiving is risky.

My doctor shrugged of my occasional cigar use and I can tell you anecdotally that my blood pressure is never lower than while lighting one up in the company of friends. Some research indicates health benefits of moderate whiskey consumption.

I know capable people that didn’t start a business and then got fired from their “safe” job.

Venomous snakes are incredibly useful for controlling rat and varmint populations in many areas, some of which carry diseases. That feels like a net benefit to me, especially considering my home state of Missouri only has five recorded deaths due to venomous snake bites. That is a crazy low number, the first death occurring in 1933.

In 2019, skydiving had a fatality rate of 0.45 per 100,000. Driving a vehicle had a fatality rate of 11 per 100,000. So it might be better to drop into work from 12,000 feet than to steer yourself there just a few feet off the ground.

Certainly smoking and drinking everyday, starting a business with no market knowledge, playing peek-a-boo with a rattlesnake, and jumping out of a plane without appropriate gear and assistance are all stupid, “risky” ideas. But smoking/drinking/entrepreneurship/snakes/skydiving aren’t risky. Context matters.

Touting risks as categorical has initiated many a political crusade to stamp out any final, minute vestiges of water pollution, racism, and poverty – regardless of the overall cost to society and often in spite of massive, unintended consequences.

Many people see everything uncomfortable as a categorical risk and never take the step to liberate themselves from dead end jobs or to go on epic adventures – that is, most people “die with the music still in them.”

Until we reframe the risk of circumstances and options in our lives as incremental, as something on a sliding scale or continuum, we will be unlikely to do what we ought most do.