Some risks look smart only because everyone else is doing them. Check the math on your own.

A crowd makes a thing feel safe without making it safe. You read other people’s confidence as evidence, which is usually reasonable, since they might know something. The failure comes when everybody is doing that at once and nobody checked, so the whole room is borrowing certainty from the room. Popularity is information about popularity and nothing else.

Before you commit, write the downside in your own words and your own numbers. Then ask yourself what you would think of the idea if you were the only person you knew who was doing it.