(Context: Making up a reason why I should take my masters)
This is my current mental framework. There seems go be multiple paths that I can take, some more risky and others less risky. How do you decide what risks to take? We learn about expected value in school, so maybe we should take every risk that has a positive expected value. But that's not the full picture, because it implies much more risk-taking than most people would be comfortable with. That's where we talk about the evolution of risk-aversion, right? Risk-aversion evolved because people who took wrong risks exited the gene pool. But that's not the full picture either, because that implies taking no risks at all! Taleb wrote a lot of interesting stuff about risk in Black Swan and Antifragile, and while I've forgotten the details, the takeaway that I got was that you should take as much risk as possible that has a positive expected value, *as long as the risk won't take you out of the game*.
Which is why it makes sense for me to go for a masters's, which is super risky, but has a high EV and is also something I can afford if it doesn't work out. Though the real reason I want to go is because I'm bored out of my mind, not to make more money 😂 I just like for my whims to be rationally justified