Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Risk implies the odds of a negative consequence. You don't say, “the risk of becoming a millionaire,” but you don't want the risk of going broke. Stripping off that distinction, risk is simply the probability of something you don't want to happen. Even animals calculate risk to some degree, maybe not with the clarity that humans do, but tigers do not attack elephants unless the chance of starvation outweighs the possibility of being trampled to death. It's interesting that if fate were real then risk would be inconsequential; but if determinism were real, risk, or the odds of an event occurring, would be the most important variable in your life. Determining the odds is what separates somewhat lucky people from the super lucky people.

Because most people don't like the stress that risk brings, they try to find others to make decisions for them, which is attractive to ideologies that ignore personal responsibility; those people want someone else responsible for the risks they take. This completely ignores the risk of such a strategy: any ideology that makes individual choice subservient to another, means you are risking they will exploit their power and authority; this is a gamble without knowing the odds, the very definition of maximum risk.