Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

But the story Mason’s telling (about stats like those) is the US valuing risk/adventure less. That's what I'm expressing skepticism about, relative to other factors, like wage stagnation, rising education & health care costs, political polarization, immigration policy, etc.

I don't think these elements are unrelated. I actually suspect that rapidly increasing education costs are driving the culture shift, though I'm not confident about that!

Sure, but the question we're disagreeing about is whether there is a node in the causal graph titled "lower value on adventure/risk" that has an arrow pointing from it to some important outcome measures in the American economy/society

In my model, there (probably) isn't -- so if increased education costs affect important outcomes in society, it isn't via a "lower value on adventure/risk" intermediate node

... but one thing that could make me update towards your model is if Openness to Experience has gone down over time in the US. I don't actually know the answer to that. But maybe a personality researcher like @hardsci does?

Depending on the meaning of risk-taking it may be more in the extraversion domain (sensation-seeking, boldness, impulsiveness, etc.). There's one study I know of showing later generations have gone *up* in extraversion - but I'm not sure I put a ton of stock in that study

Having lived through a few generations now and having seen every younger one called out by old"er" folk usually based on anecdote rather than data, I'm beginning to see cohort arguments as intellectual amuse-bouches--puffs of indefensible statements that everyone likes...