Not trying is the only 100%

Someone once asked what keeps people trying when the odds are bad, and one answer did the whole job with arithmetic. Trying might carry a small chance of working — small, but never zero. Not trying carries a one hundred percent chance of failure. Every single time, no exceptions, guaranteed.

The asymmetry, spelled out

The move this answer makes is quietly radical: it refuses to compare trying against safety, because that comparison doesn’t exist. Both roads end somewhere. One ends at a small chance of yes plus a large chance of a survivable no; the other ends at a certain no that you issued yourself, in advance, for free. Once you see not-trying as a bet with a fixed losing outcome — rather than a neutral non-event — the fear of bad odds loses most of its authority. Bad odds beat no odds in every universe.

What other people added

Around that answer, others filled in the softer sides of the same truth. One person said low odds were the appeal — the harder the door, the more it means when it opens. Another reframed the attempt itself as the prize: try it to find out what you learn and who you become on the way, because without new attempts there’s no growth to be had at all. And a third put words on the alternative: never trying doesn’t make the question go away — you carry the wondering instead.

Using the arithmetic

This arithmetic is a tool for a specific moment: the pause before an application, a message, a first attempt, when the inner forecast says probably not. Let the forecast stand — it might be right. Then ask the only question the math cares about: is probably-not worse than certainly-not? It never is. Send the thing.