Risk and reward are a part of life. Nothing we do is 100% for certain, and all of us know that. But do you ever consider what level of risk you should be taking?
In a previous post, I talked about gambling with money, but what about risk taking as a whole? Obviously, the way your life has gone so far will dictate this. Those who lost it all to big risks will tell you that risks are horrible, and those who won it all to big risks will tell you that risks are great. Those who did both will tell you that it depends. But rather than talk about risks in terms of financial decisions, styles of life, or anything else, we have to talk about it in terms of morals.
A lot of risks that people make are moral risks, in one of two ways. Either it must decide between the better of two moral obligations that cannot be fulfilled at once, or it must be a decision where there is a chance the outcome has a positive/negative moral impact. We make decisions like this every single day, believe it or not. Sometimes it’s unintentional: for instance, there are many times when someone tells you they don’t like one of your actions, but you forget and do it anyway. Other times, we are aware of it, but don’t realize how much damage it could cause. For example, not telling people things or lying to them. And finally, we have times where we are perfectly aware of what we are doing. These situations are risks that involve morality, but I like to call it moral gambling. I do not know right now if there is an official term for these, but decision theory probably does have some name for it.
These dilemmas are the fabric of society. We have to consider everyone’s issues at once, but we can’t provide for all of them. This causes a ton of disputes because no one can agree on what the right choice is.
Now, let’s think of this in terms of math. Theoretically, if we assume that we cannot predict the future exactly and that there will be random events, then moral gambling becomes extremely complicated. Because the world is so vast and there are many factors at play that are either hidden or unable to be controlled by an individual, it can be extremely difficult to estimate the chances of your decision being the right one.
On the flip side, if we can exactly predict the future, and there are no random events, then moral gambling essentially becomes a pointless subject, and the best question instead becomes “do we have free will?”
To anyone reading this, I encourage you to always accept risks in moderacy. There is nothing wrong in taking a calculated risk, but sometimes people’s judgement leads them to think they’ve calculated properly when there are obvious signs that they haven’t. And of course, there will always be times when you should never take a risk, because it is the worst idea you’ve ever heard.