This is an observable trait in people. Young people, in particular, want to experience life whether the consequences are good or bad. Children want to try things for themselves. They do not put much credence in advice. They want to experience.
Bravado is an admired trait.
None have it to the degree of Hubbard, according to Hubbard. He, without more than a passing thought for the consequences, took his sanity in both hands, nay his very spiritual existence, and sailed out into the storm-tossed and uncharted waters of the stuff of life. Thetans show their genius by the ways in which they so deny their own existence and god-like capabilities as to end up as human beings. A shrewd self-negation is necessary to turn a being at total cause over the physical universe into us. Progress in sociological, political, medical and technological subjects is meaningless.