what is the riskiest thing you've ever done? 🥷🤺⚔️🗡️

I'm really curious to hear from anyone who subscribed to this

Trying out Otter for transcribing today:

Whenever I hear somebody who has never started a business talk about an entrepreneur, they always use the word risk.

I think this word is incredibly problematic because it is sharp and intense and evokes a sense of a threat.

I think the word risk should be used in very specific circumstances, if you are risking your life for your country, if bankruptcy would stop your ability to put food on the table for your family, if you're at risk of starvation or drought, if your life is in danger, those, to me, feel like real risks because they end the game. The vast majority of people I know who are starting startups or trying new things or exploring areas of science are not so much taking a risk as going on an adventure. If things don't work out, their life is not going to end. If things don't work out, they are not going to go hungry. If things don't work out, they are not going to be thirsty. And I think that it's really important to separate real risk, which is physical and intense, from from adventures which are exciting and may or may not work out,

I'm a big believer that people should explore things that might seem risky from the outside, but are much more interesting from the inside. One of these areas is martial arts. People might say it is risky to go and fight people who are 50% heavier than me, but after 15 years of exploring this field, I view it as an adventure.

Many times I will lose fights in the context of a particular style of martial arts, but overall, I feel that this is an adventure worth going on because it teaches me things about my abilities or lack of them.When I think about the generations of people that led to my existence, a bunch of them must have taken some really extreme risks immigrating without knowing whether they could actually make it into the next country, going on quests where they had to battle fellow villagers, fighting different tribesmen, and exploring their own relationship With mortality and violence.

Those seem like extreme risks by way of comparison, I think the modern world is presented with so many possible adventures. There are so many ways to live in this world nowadays, so many countries you can visit, so many ways you can generate income, and so many ways you can explore reality, and all of those definitely carry a set of opportunities and potential losses.

But I wouldn't say the vast majority of people who are living in Europe and the US are taking extreme risks. I think they are more pushing themselves in the context of relatively stable places to live. Now, of course, this is not true for much of Africa and increasingly in South America and other places like the Middle East. And I fully acknowledge that I don't understand the kinds of risks that people take there, but I just don't think if you're reading this from the comfort of your home in the United States or any European country that you are really ever taking a serious risk. I think what you're doing is embarking on an adventure.

I'd be curious to hear what you think about that.