Proceeding on the hope that it will turn out well, treated as a stance toward risk rather than as an oversight.
The word names the decision to act without provision for failure and without pretending the provision exists. It is worth keeping as a distinct concept because it is not the same as miscalculating the odds: the odds are understood and the preparation is declined anyway.
In practice
- A driver who sets out over a mountain pass without chains has not misjudged the weather.
- A team ships without a rollback plan, knowing what a rollback plan is for.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation is that where provision for failure is unaffordable or unavailable, acting without it is the only option, and a word for it saves the pretence. Another is fatalism about outcomes no one controls.
- In its favour
- The stance it names is distinct and worth a word: proceeding without cover is not the same as failing to notice the risk.
- Against it
- It is a national-character commonplace, and comparative evidence does not show that risk-taking in Russia differs in the way the idiom asserts; self-descriptions of a national trait are weak evidence for it.
- Standing
- A national-character commonplace. There is no comparative evidence that risk-taking in Russia differs in the way the idiom asserts, and self-description is not measurement.
- Subject
- Risk & Reliability
- Essay
- How much caution, and the jokes about its limits