Is risk really risky?

The traditional view of risk and return is that an investor's or entrepreneur's returns is related to the type of risks he or she takes. If he or she takes a large number of high risk bets, the overall returns should be large. As their stories go, well-known and successful investors and entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Muhammed Yunnus and George Soros have tread unconventional paths and made bold decisions which have determined their success. But while general society views their stories as a set of bold and risky decisions, in their eyes were their decisions risky? I believe not - that is to say, to these investors and entrepreneurs, these decisions were very simple to make because, to them, the outcomes were certain.

If these entrepreneurs and investors have a unique way of understanding information which enable them to get a strong "feeling" about the future - a "feeling" which tends towards certainty - then their decisions would be almost based on certainty. Many of these types of people talk about their "gut instinct" and just "going with the flow" and these inclinations are what led them to their success. The decisions made would be viewed as risky and foolish by the average person at the point in time when the decision was made but perhaps the abilities of these investors and entrepreneurs enabled and enables them to process and assimilate information that led and leads to degrees of certainty about future events that the general society or the average person cannot see. Is it that the abilities of these investors and entrepreneurs allow them to see into the future in a way that enables decisions to be made based on a unique view of trends, events and outcomes that tends towards near certainty? I believe so, and further, if someone else had taken any of same decisions as any of one of these unique investors or entrepreneurs, the outcome would not have been the same as the understanding that converts the uncertainty into certainty would have been absent in the average person.

In that case, to try to emulate the strategies, decisions and paths of very successful investors and entrepreneurs is like chasing wind.