On the Concept of Risk

        To begin, I felt that it was necessary to refer to the subject as the "concept of risk" because those who know me are aware of the fact that the board game is one of my favorites: it's not a very large stretch of imagination to believe that I would consider writing an entire blog post dedicated to the strategy and the metagame. No, no, in this particular post I will discuss the all-pervasive possibility of failure or unintended consequences, and how its existence affects our actions and thus our lives. The good, the bad, I'll try to cover it all and evaluate risk in a fair manner, for it would be sacrilege to my logical nature to do anything else. I arbitrarily choose to start with the bad, in order to appeal to the frightened child in us all.

        Risk is inherently dangerous. Risk ruins lives and relationships. Risk is the reason why so much potential in this world is not realized, perhaps why we haven't yet colonized the moon or cured cancer. Risk accompanies any path of action, and some people dedicate their lives and careers to minimizing it, usually in a financial or political scene. Alas, I find it hard to continue writing this; I'm sure you all are intelligent people and don't need me to tell you what risk is. The question, for me, then becomes "how can I contribute a unique viewpoint or fact about the concept to keep my readers' interests?"

        I argue that risk is philosophically tied to happiness. There can be no reward if there is no risk; after all, what value would a trophy have if you hadn't faced hardship to earn it? Without a negative result to feel good about avoiding, happy endings are meaningless. Moreover, life without risk is too deterministic and dependent on circumstances for my tastes. One of my greatest quirks is that I simultaneously believe that we can change fate, despite the fact that it's immutable. (I could go over the logical basis for my belief, though that's a blog post for another day.)  I guess the larger point that I want to bring up is that happiness can't exist without despair.

        Avert your eyes if you don't wish to see me beating a dead horse. Without X to contrast with Y, we can't appreciate either. One who has grown up knowing only Y can't appreciate it. Statement of personal belief, followed by a small opinionated sentence fragment. Statement of larger aim.

You're still reading? Impressive. I can't even stand to read my own writing sometimes.

        Back to the haphazard discussion: one of the most unique concepts that I pondered when I was younger was the idea that, without exception, anything and everything had an opposite. You may say "but people are unique and don't have opposites," but you'd be looking at the matter from an emotional viewpoint. In my mind, people are collections of attributes and experiences. Most attribute have opposites (mean and nice), and every characteristic or experience that doesn't can be broken down into parts that do. Tripping and scraping your knee on the driveway is a combination of: losing balance as opposed to keeping balance, the death of knee tissue as opposed to generation, an attractive force (gravity) as opposed to a repulsive force (think magnetism), and sadness as opposed to happiness.

        I believe that humans cannot comprehend anything that doesn't have an opposite. I suppose it is up to you, the reader, to challenge me if this belief seems absurd; just know that I've probably already contemplated the first criticism that pops into your head. Perhaps a spirited debate would ensue, who knows. I'd appreciate any well-intentioned comment. At any rate, you're getting tired of reading my loose arrangement of opinionated statements. Maybe you can even look to this post as sort of a how-to guide on making stylish logical fallacies, then it might serve some purpose. As a final note, I apologize for going off in such a tangent, because I was "supposed" to be discussing risk. I figured that I would rather annoy you, the reader, by keeping the title. I will relish your frustration. </sadism>

On the value of practice

        I'd like to say that my recent life has seen massive paradigm shifts in how I view the idea of practice, due to the fact that I occasionally like to be overly dramatic in my writing. However, to stay as true to reality as possible, I will attempt to refrain from assigning undeserved importance to small events. Oh dear, I seem to have left you with the all-important question: "What's your point?" I would like to talk about practice and how recent developments have altered my view of it, dear reader. I'm not referring to the arcane definition involving lawyers and a mountain of legal terms, but the process of becoming better at any given activity.
        To begin with, I feel the need to distinguish something between the popular definition and my own. Practice is often called so because the activity is being done for the sole purpose of improving the participant's skills. Most people, for example, wouldn't consider a soccer championship match "practice" explicitly, though the weekly meetings to complete drills and related activities would be thought of that way. I would like to think that the term "practice" encompasses so much more than its popular meaning does.
        No matter the circumstances, when you are doing something, you are getting better at it. How much fun you are having and the enjoyment you reap from doing something matter not, and paradoxically the importance of the activity is irrelevant. Every moment of the championship game is preparing you for the next one, albeit silently. While playing any video game, you come to discover that you do better on subsequent playthroughs (I'm somewhat of an expert on that subject, being a video-game fiend of at least 11 years). After doing anything you come to realize that you could do it better next time. Hindsight is 20/20, as the saying goes. Anything and everything you do may be considered practice from this viewpoint, and thus we come to see that the popular definition is rather narrow.
        Taking this into account, we may find an important fact: everything that you do can be thought of as practice and thus may be considered inherently worthwhile. Working through a terribly hard mathematical problem will give you insight into the next one, like lazily sorting papers or working on a hard program all day will eventually make you the resident office wizard. Because the importance of the activity and the satisfaction you draw from doing it are irrelevant, they do not determine (or even affect) the inherent value of practice. In simpler terms, just doing something is at least a little worthwhile whether you hate to do it or not.
        At this point you may be wondering what the "recent developments" I mentioned earlier were. Well, recently, I was tasked with reading a book titled Outliers that talked heavily about the subject. A magical rule called "The 10,000 hour rule" came to my attention, and it went something like this: in order to become the very best at a given activity, of world-class quality, you must spend at least 10,000 hours doing it. At first I thought that notion was silly, but then the author brought up a valuable point: none of the exceptional people mentioned in the book were exceptions to this rule. With such a powerful body of evidence, I could hardly disagree. This rule had an unusual corollary when coupled with the fact I mentioned earlier: if you could possibly value becoming a world-class participant in any given event, every drop of effort you pour into doing anything is worth it to some degree.
        Perhaps more important than the random bits of information presented in my dissertation is this idea. Interestingly enough, this notion has another corollary: If everything you do is worthwhile, there is no need to feel sad for being lazy, because you are in fact working towards something by playing badminton with friends, or in my case playing League of Legends. Perhaps the limits of my style or writing skills will prevent me from conveying just how impactful this new-found philosophy is, but I will leave you, my reader, with the information presented here in the hopes that it will be as beneficial for you as it was for me.