In competitive archery, risk assessment has minimal bearing on quality of performance, since the archer has so little choice over shot selection. By contrast, in a hunt, shots vary in quality according to how well selected they may be.

Descartes's epistemology is a special case of Aristotle's virtue ethics.

It is bad to want something that not even God could attain, especially when the impossibility becomes obvious.

One does not avoid incompetence if one makes an attempt whose likelihood of success is too low. This seems little more than analytic: when the performance is in a domain that imposes standards of risk, attempts may or may not meet such standards. And the relevant competence of agents then includes reliably enough meeting those standards.

There isn't a formal definition of success.

Arguably, if you view a real barn in bright sunlight and close by, while fully alert and otherwise in good shape, then you do know whether or not you see a barn. You have "animal" knowledge, says my virtue theory, through the first-order aptness of your judgment.

We can pursue the Cartesian project without restricting ourselves to theology and a priori faculties. A better, broader perspective is properly sought if we pursue the project with reliance on science broadly and on our full span of epistemic competences, including the empirical as well as the a priori.