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WRONG QUESTION: What Have I Got to Lose?

Uploaded 8/29/2024, approx. 4 minute read

When you are faced with a life-altering decision, for example, should I watch another Sam Vaknin video, you usually conduct, automatically, a cost-benefit analysis.

And yes, this applies to all decisions and all choices. Even ones that are trivial, tangential and peripheral.

Throughout life, we have to make thousands of choices a day. And each and every one of these forks in the road, each and every cross path and crossroad, and force us into considering gains, benefits versus losses, the costs.

And yet, I have a tip for you. Listen well.

Never ask, what have I got to lose?

Always inquire, what can I gain by choosing to behave this way? What would be the benefits if I were to opt for this course of action and adopt these set of measures and steps?

Why this asymmetry between gains and losses? Why this discrepancy?

Why don't I advise you to consider equally costs and benefits, losses and gains?

Because our brains are wired to gauge gains and benefits accurately and to evaluate risks and losses inaccurately, imprecisely, wrongly.

And we tend to overestimate risks or underestimate dangers. We never get it right.

If we were fully cognizant and aware of the set of risks and dangers out there, we would never date. We would never take a loan from our bank. We would never get married. We would never have children. We would never have a life. We would never leave home.

We would endure a process called constriction.

To avoid this, nature has equipped us with a device known as the brain. Some of us have it, others aspire to have it.

And this device, the brain, performs these analyses on the fly, appraises gains accurately and minimizes risks and dangers to allow us to grandiosely take on the world, confront reality and then mesh ourselves in our environment.

Now, sometimes we overestimate risks and dangers. And that is usually the case when the gains are very minimal.

It is a kind of fail-safe mechanism in the brain.

But when the gains are substantial or visible or ostentatious or when the gains are important, are critical in a specific juncture in our lives, we then tend to minimize the attendant costs and risks and dangers and we tend to move on.

We tend to take on challenges. We tend to engage in activities which are new to us. We tend to adopt courses of action whose end outcome is not guaranteed or even predictable.

So because you are not equipped to evaluate costs and risk appropriately and you are highly equipped to evaluate gains appropriately.

This is the way of evolution.

I advise you to never ask the question, what have I got to lose?

Because you are incapable of coming up with a correct accurate answer to this.

The losses are likely either to be much higher than you could ever imagine or much lower than you think.

At any rate, you're not likely to get it right.

So don't ask this question. Instead, ask yourself, what can I gain by choosing to behave this way, by choosing this course of action, by adopting this set of procedures and decisions?

You're likely to evaluate the gain pretty accurately.

Now, what do you do if you believe that you stand nothing to lose and nothing to gain if it's a totally neutral situation?

Well then there's a principle, two principles actually.

Do no harm. Choose the course of action that minimizes harm to other people. Don't hurt other people. Don't damage other people. Do no harm.

And the second principle is, do unto others as you want them to treat you. Treat other people the way you want them to treat you.

These are actually the two pillars and foundations of morality if you adopt these two principles you've got the totality of every known moral system ever, do no harm and treat others the way you want them to treat you. That's the entire teaching, the entire Torah, as Rabbi Hillel said in the Talmud.

So, what have I got to lose? Maybe everything. Maybe everything, maybe nothing, but why gamble? Gamble? What have I got to gain?

I know what I've got to gain and as a minimum what you've got to gain is moral behavior. When you behave morally and conscientiously it gives you a good feeling. It renders you egosyntonic. It calms you down. It's anxiolytic. It reduces anxiety. It makes you feel good about yourself and justifiably so.

Good luck.

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