Nassim Taleb: pick two people at random
If their combined height is 4.1m, it's basically 2.05 + 2.05.
If their combined wealth is $36M, it's almost never 18 + 18 - it's ~$1,000 and ~$36M.
Height lives in "Mediocristan," where the average tells you everything.
Wealth - and markets - live in "Extremistan," where one event dominates the whole picture.
Ruin there never comes from a string of bad days.
It comes from a single one.
~1hr lecture, free. The Black Swan author at Cambridge on why the statistics you were taught break exactly where it matters.
Being right on average means nothing if one tail empties the account.
@Jason@DavidSacks I used NotebookLM to build a deck around the plot of Mountainhead to help drive a narrative in one of my presentations; I figured you guys may appreciate its thoughts on archetypes.
Things like this convince us that 100% of everything we believe about our environment/reality is a temporary lie. Sight, sound, object, matters, etc. have all been contextualized to us as babies by others. Actual reality is probably schizophrenic chaos.