Technology has made speculation more widespread, and social media spreads every story of overnight wealth, luring the masses into a massive, inevitable losing gamble like moths to a flame.
Written by: thiccy
Translated by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News
The Era of High-Risk Appetite Speculation
[The rest of the translation follows the same professional English translation approach, maintaining the original structure and meaning while translating the text fully into English.] [The full translation would continue in this manner, preserving technical terms like 'Block', 'TRON', 'HT', 'AR', 'RON', and 'ONG' as specified in the initial instructions.]Christianity once spread due to its promise of universal salvation. Buddhism proliferated by claiming that everyone can attain enlightenment.
Modern versions must similarly provide dignity, purpose, and alternative paths for all, lest they self-destruct in pursuit of the jackpot.
Psychological Foundations of the High-Risk Speculative Era
This jackpot obsession has profound psychological roots. The human brain evolved with a strong preference for instant rewards, a mechanism helpful for survival during hunting and gathering times, but a trap in modern financial environments. The dopamine system is abnormally sensitive to potential high returns, even when actual probabilities are extremely low. Neuroscience research shows that when people fantasize about winning big, brain activation patterns are almost identical to those when actually receiving small, guaranteed continuous rewards.
Social media and financial technology products cleverly exploit these neural mechanisms. Infinite scrolling information feeds, instant trade execution, and dazzling profit displays create a perfect addiction cycle. Every success story is algorithmically amplified, while countless failure cases are quietly filtered. This distorted information environment reinforces the illusion of "the next one could be me".
Failure of the Education System
The modern education system somewhat fosters this jackpot mentality. Standardized tests and elite selection mechanisms are essentially winner-takes-all competitions, instilling a "all or nothing" mindset in students from an early age. The star effect in fields like arts and sports further reinforces this concept. When young people enter society, they are already accustomed to defining success as extreme outcomes, rather than gradual accumulation.
University education is increasingly viewed as a lottery, with a few gaining massive returns through elite school halos, while most carry heavy loans with limited returns. This structure naturally guides people to seek other forms of "lottery" - whether in cryptocurrencies, influencer economics, or startup crazes.
Amplification by the Financial System
The modern financial system is technically the perfect engine of jackpot culture. Zero-commission trading, leverage products, and derivatives allow ordinary people to engage in speculation once reserved for professional institutions. Algorithmic market makers and dark pool trading create an illusion of liquidity, masking the essentially zero-sum nature of the game.
The venture capital industry has even institutionalized jackpot logic. Successful funds often rely on a few hundred-fold return projects to compensate for most failed investments. This model is revered, with few questioning its long-term impact on the innovation ecosystem. When all resources chase potential unicorns, stable companies creating moderate returns are left unsupported.
Disintegration of Social Mobility
The prevalence of jackpot culture is closely related to declining social mobility. When opportunities for class advancement through traditional paths (education, career progression) decrease, extreme speculation naturally becomes an alternative choice. The financialization of the real estate market has transformed housing from a basic need to a speculative tool, further intensifying this trend.
The widening intergenerational wealth gap creates a vicious cycle: young people without family wealth are more inclined to high-risk behaviors, which in turn leads to greater wealth disparity. When social safety nets are weak, people's tolerance for "all or nothing" bets abnormally increases.
The Dilemma of Technological Accelerationism
The current narrative of technological accelerationism forms a dangerous resonance with jackpot culture. Blind worship of exponential growth ignores fundamental physical and social system limitations. When every startup claims to "change the world", the actual output is often zero-sum or negative-sum financial engineering.
This is especially evident in blockchain and AI fields. Most projects do not create substantial value, but instead attract capital through complex token economics and arbitrage opportunities. The result is a bubble-filled ecosystem where genuine innovation struggles to obtain resources and attention.
Possible Solutions
Reversing jackpot culture requires reforms at multiple levels:
- Financial Regulation: Limit the accessibility of leverage and speculative products, strengthen behavioral oversight of financial technology.
- Educational Reform: Cultivate students' probabilistic thinking and long-term planning abilities, reduce excessive emphasis on rankings.
- Tax Policies: Heavily tax short-term capital gains, encourage long-term investments.
- Media Responsibility: Require social media platforms to balance displays of speculative risks and returns.
- Social Security: Establish more comprehensive safety nets to reduce economic pressures driving risky behavior.
Ultimately, we need to redefine standards of success. A healthy society should reward continuous value creation, not occasional lucky breakthroughs. This requires a comprehensive transformation from individual mindset to institutional design, and is a difficult long march against deep-rooted psychological preferences.
