2018 Dead Pool

Quote: Pacomartin

A friend of mine said women admire risk takers, but only if you always succeed. They hate weakness, and the so called "middle ground" looks like weakness.

The middle ground usually is weakness. Politicians deal with the extremes: minorities. zealots, poor, wealtlhy... usually at the expense of the middle.

Taking care of squeaky wheels is fine but the problems never get solved just postponed.

Risk Takers are admired because cunning and bravery are recognized as good traits. That is why a female chimpanzee will be receptive to a very low status male who approaches her while Alpha Male and Beta Male are sorting things out. His cunning is seen as good genes and Alpha won't know its not his.

Thin of it as a man going off to find gold. His adventurous spirit and entrepreneurial efforts will be rewarded by females, if he strikes it rich. Let him come home broke and his adventurous spirit is seen as instability and risk.

Quote: Fleastiff

Risk Takers are admired because cunning and bravery are recognized as good traits.

And how many of them fail miserably.
If risk taking was a sure thing everybody
would do it. But few do because it's as
far from a sure thing as you can get.

I lost count decades ago of people I
knew that took huge risks in business
and went out of business. Very very
common.

Quote: Evenbob

And how many of them fail miserably.
If risk taking was a sure thing everybody
would do it. But few do because it's as
far from a sure thing as you can get.

That is why they are admired, they had the guts to try. How many people would say a kid should finish college rather than sell some new thing called software to IBM?

Quote: AZDuffman

That is why they are admired, they had the guts to try.

They're admired if they succeed. I
don't know any that failed miserably
and were congratulated for at least
trying. In fact, they are usually treated
as failures, they often lose their wives
and everything else.

I'm talking mostly about business ventures.
A guy has a great pizza joint so he opens
another one on the other side of town
that fails so badly he goes out of business
entirely. A guy who goes into hock up
to his ass on a sure thing property and
ends up bankrupt over it. A guy who quits
his good job to open a mailbox outlet
and keeps sinking money into it till he
loses his house. A guy who buys up 7
buildings all attached to each other for
an antique mall, goes into debt for a
million, 7 years later has to skip town
to avoid creditors.

These are just a few I know who lost
everything taking a risk. I call them
dumbasses because none of them
really knew what they were doing
and I told them as much. I know exactly
one guy who was wildly successful
by taking a risk. He sold his business
in 1999 for $3 mil and lost most of
it in the tech market crash a year later.
Even there I told him not to put all
his eggs in the proverbial basket.
He scoffed, he was a brilliant businessman.

Quote: AZDuffman

That is why they are admired, they had the guts to try. How many people would say a kid should finish college rather than sell some new thing called software to IBM?

My world is full of wide-eyed game inventors. I'm not saying nobody has ever made it in that field but today it is super-competitive and anything that makes it can be easily stolen for free. I warn everyone of the risks but nobody listens. Do I admire people with the guts to try to make it with a lousy game? No.

Quote: AZDuffman

That is why they are admired, they had the guts to try. How many people would say a kid should finish college rather than sell some new thing called software to IBM?

It's not that people who try and fail many times don't sometimes become extremely successful. I'm sure I can find a nice list of people who failed many times before making it big, but most success gurus don't ever mention the landscape littered with bodies of hopefuls.

And it's not even that I mind that. It's truth in advertising!

If you push a method that works but only for 2% of your participants you need to least mention it somewhere. And you should probably mention it more than that.

And that's my short rant on that issue.

Quote: Wizard

My world is full of wide-eyed game inventors. I'm not saying nobody has ever made it in that field but today it is super-competitive and anything that makes it can be easily stolen for free. I warn everyone of the risks but nobody listens. Do I admire people with the guts to try to make it with a lousy game? No.

I agree there is taking risk and being stupid. But it is risk takers who push us forward.

Quote: AZDuffman

Trivia time! Who, as the story goes, had to shoot an apple on the head of his son?

Quote: Wizard

Quote: AZDuffman

Trivia time! Who, as the story goes, had to shoot an apple on the head of his son?

William Tell.

Also that guy on "Mad Men"

Quote: Wizard

Quote: AZDuffman

Trivia time! Who, as the story goes, had to shoot an apple on the head of his son?