The only thing an old man can tell a young man is that it goes fast, real fast, and if you're not careful it's too late. Of course, the young man will never understand this truth.
- Norm Macdonald
Just think of the people you know that haven't had your luck that you know are better than you.
That's all you have to choose gratitude.
Somehow how you think you're so agentic and deserving yet you are unable to choose to see reality.
I am a fan of what @choffstein has brought to market so I made a little side project as a potential alternative to generic robo-advisors. It has been up on my VPS for only about a month but I like what its doing thus far: factor-target minimum-variance risk parity across 8 return-stacked ETFs (RSST, MATE, CTAP, DBMF, RSSB, RSBA, RSSX, HFGM). VIX-percentile regime detection flips factor targets between growth / neutral / crisis. Vol-scaled, BIL absorbs the residual. Rebalanced on regime change or monthly drift.
There's a physicist at Stanford named Safi Bahcall who modeled this exact principle and the math is wild.
He calls it "phase transitions in human networks." When you're stationary, your probability of a lucky event is limited to your existing surface area: the people you already know, the places you already go, the ideas you've already been exposed to. Your opportunity window is fixed.
When you move, your collision rate with new nodes in a network increases nonlinearly. Double your movement (new conversations, new cities, new projects) and your probability of a serendipitous encounter doesn't double. It roughly quadruples. Because each new node connects you to their entire network, not just to them.
Richard Wiseman ran a 10-year study at the University of Hertfordshire tracking self-described "lucky" and "unlucky" people. The single biggest differentiator wasn't IQ, education, or family money. Lucky people scored significantly higher on one trait: openness to experience. They talked to strangers more, varied their routines more, and said yes to invitations at nearly twice the rate.
The "unlucky" group followed the same routes, ate at the same restaurants, and talked to the same 5 people. Their networks were closed loops. No new inputs, no new collisions.
Luck isn't random. Luck is surface area. And surface area is a function of movement.
The lobster emoji is doing more work than most people realize. Lobsters grow by shedding their shell when it gets too tight. The growth requires a period of total vulnerability. No protection, no armor, soft body exposed to the ocean.
That's the cost of movement nobody posts about. You have to be uncomfortable first. The new shell only hardens after you've already moved.
@profplum99 @philandrew_IL9 I’m in the 9th and it’s hard not to feel like the Dem party made Biss the selection by pouring so much in the way of resources behind him. The election group think on the north shore of Chicago is palatable but I hope you have helped Andrew’s visibility.
Have been speaking a lot more with people doing applied AI/ML for medical research and honestly if we could cure cancer and get absolutely nothing else then all the capex spending will have been worth it
For millennia, jocks ran everything.
The nerds finally take over.
And what do they do?
Develop AI that wipes out their own coding/math/analysis moats.
Creating a social premium on interpersonal skills.
The irony.