When they say older people are more risk-averse they really mean more cowardly. It’s not that you magically learn to do more sophisticated risk modeling and develop a subtle Bayesian bias. Upsides diminish, downsides grow, the fear response strengthens, and you accrue more resources to avoid triggering it.

Blogger at ribbonfarm.com, running summerofprotocols.com, host of /gloom ☀️

Older people are less often visibly afraid, but that’s because they’ve learned to stay away from the triggers not because they’ve mastered the fear response and are regulating it better. Outside of very narrow skill+resource areas, life makes you more fearful and puts you in retreat by default.

Thinking about my own changing attitude with age, watching my dad (he’s in his 80s and suddenly got way more tentative after a serious fall last year), as well as public data points like for eg Geoff Hinton turning to AI fear in his old age.