Yes, I have a pretty high risk tolerance. I have a strong desire to have as large of an impact in the world as I can. I am also quite optimistic that I will succeed in doing interesting and impressive things if I keep trying, because I think I'm in a position of having a lot of the right resources and the correct mindset for success.

I try to assess what I actually need to stay safe, and make sure I have that, and then play big beyond that. Living in a 1st world country at this point in time, I don't think my life is in danger nearly as much as the lizard aspects of my mind like to tell me. I try to evaluate as logically as I can about risk, with the knowledge that people are much more motivated to avoid pain than pursue pleasure, and making conscious corrections for this - I aim to maximize utility as accurately as I can.

Agreed about running into unexpected failure modes repeatedly being a red flag. I like strategies with high payoff potentials, which often have high likelihood of failure in expected ways. However, there are often a lot of positive externalities to trying and failing, so the likelihood of getting positive utility is much higher than that of success of what I am specifically attempting.

For example, I have already gotten a very interesting email from someone who is considering offering me an opportunity that I am excited about as a result of this article, although it is yet to be seen if any businesses will actually be created or improved.

Oooh. That's a more direct assumption. Let's scrutinize this:

"if you keep running into unexpected failure modes, you are not doing your homework."

Do you agree with any of the following, if so, which ones:

1. There is a limit to the amount of problem-solving effort that life demands of people.
2. People are always able to predict which problems they're going to have in advance.
3. There is a limit to the complexity of problems and it happens to match human limitations.
4. Diligent people are in some way protected from other people's problems spilling over onto them.
5. That expecting a problem will automatically guarantee it gets solved (that the resources will always be available, that multiple other problems won't rob you of the necessities to solve upcoming disasters in advance).

If you disagree with even one of those statements, why do you assume that if a person is presented with multiple quagmires, they didn't do their homework? This is reality and reality doesn't care about you. Life may give you problems more complex than you can figure out, other people's problems will create problems for you, sometimes life gives you more problems than you can process at once, nobody sees everything coming, and even when you do see something coming, nothing guarantees you'll have the resources to stop it.

If you know all of this, why do you say such things?