Assessing of Risks Generally

One of the blessings or burdens of intelligence is the assessment of risks. Animals in general are pretty poor about working out consequences, usually only able to deal with very simple action and reaction situations. When playing chess with a chimpanzee they still show some form of lateral thinking, able to chew bits off a piece to try to make it resemble another, so superficially this may work, but not if they come up against anybody worthwhile, transforming a rook to a bishop can have disadvantages later in the game.

The other blessing in this regard is normally age. With age comes experience and a better idea of particular paths a course of action may take. The older you get the more likely you will have seen it before and can predict an outcome. But this isn’t necessarily true in all cases and age also builds in adherence to routine and well-trod paths, but some are not averse to change unless it’s forced change, then they rebel.

Definitions of intelligence are quite often adapted to the advantage of the person defining what it is. But people are different, some are more fluid and changing, others stick to what they know but only what they know, unwilling to change to suit the new environment. It’s not really what you know, it’s the ability to adapt what you know to a new situation that gives you the advantage. There is the capacity to learn and retain. There is the willingness to learn and retain. There is the capacity to adapt. There is the willingness to adapt. There is the capacity to re-learn and retain. There is the willingness to re-learn and retain. There is the capacity to re-adapt. There is the willingness to re-adapt. There is the belief that you are always right. There is the ability to think you may not necessarily be. There is the ability to test your ideas and not bias the results. There is the ability to live in the real world, not the theoretical or one of beliefs.

In a situation you need to balance the risks, some who are naturally more daredevil, over-confident or outgoing in their aspect, some who are over-cautious, hesitant or anxiety ridden in the aspect, most somewhere inbetween. Often people though are still poor at working out the particular risks at any point, quite often substituting a large risk for a small one. Calculating a larger risk to be worth taking for a smaller gain. In this we come to the game of consequences. We have a society where leadership is paramount, the go-getter being worth many times more than the cautious or considerate. The key is not to be seen as a ditherer, but a decisive confident people who will live with their mistakes, the trouble being they make more mistakes than the ones who aren’t so sure or decisive. You see this emphasised and promoted in most disaster films where the brave aggressive confident person wins out, and the fearful hesitant timid person dies from not being able to make the decision to jump. The truth of the matter being that the latter usually gets out first and doesn’t usually get put in this situation, mostly only the ones that follow the brave confident leader. The brave confident person is put there to save the day, but they quite often produce the day, being unaware of what’s developing.

Grammar purists may spot my use of the term ‘inbetween,’ which is grammatically incorrect, but like many naturalists who see evolution as something to be stopped using any resource available, grammar is supposed to change, an unwillingness to change to a logical ‘next-version’ and keeping everything exactly as it is at the moment, an example of unwillingness or inability to adapt. Physical laws cannot be broken, but you may find ways of getting around them. Rules on the other hand are there to be adapted or broken depending on circumstance. The trick is to assess whether adapting or breaking them gives a bigger advantage than keeping them. New or modern doesn’t necessarily mean better or good, quite often losing more than you gain.

Try not to shatter people’s illusions or delusions, bending them maybe giving better results, as nobody really lives in the real world. We all have our own internal model or painting of life that we compare it against. Some people though compare the model to real life too harshly, suffering from anxiety, others never do or feel threatened by adapting it. Mentally it’s not very nice, just a reflection of it, looking at the real Medusa causing hardness and despair. The laws of physics are hard and unforgiving, the rules of physics not so much, allowing flexibility, going around the law’s a measure of adaptability. Hard people have hard lives, and surround themselves with such. Cause and effect or Karma as you wish. Bend your illusion or delusion to fit the environment. I did do another article entitled Karmechanics on probabilities of cause and effect which I will rework and put on the site.