3 ms·

Hitting black multiple times in roulette is always luck (barring cheating). What the tweet is saying, and it seems right, is that looking at a probability grap

Hitting black multiple times in roulette is always luck (barring cheating). What the tweet is saying, and it seems right, is that looking at a probability graph the only way to get the billionaire-like outcome/outlier is to dramatically increase volatility, i.e. bet on long odds. If everyone went to work, maxed out their 401k, bought blue-chip stocks, and called it a day, basically nobody would have outlier net worth. But some people choose to increase the volatility of their money (buying crypto, starting a company, options trading, whatever) and as you'd expect 99.9999% of them don't get rich and the rest of them get uber-rich.

smsm42 4y ago
> buying crypto, starting a company, options trading, whatever I think these activities are quite different however. Saying starting a company is the same nature of activity as betting on an extremely volatile asset ignores all the work that goes into successfully creating a working company. Surely, there's no guarantee this work will bring result - but it's still not the same as just betting on random high-volatility assets. Even options trading is not (always) just betting, and for more successful traders probably involves certain amount of knowledge in addition to luck. But I don't think describing creating a company as completely probabilistic activity makes any sense.
- Domenic_S 4y ago
  The tweet (and me) aren't saying creating a company is "completely probabilistic", just that they're risky. Risky meaning there is an outsized chance vs. an established company that the new one doesn't exist in 5 years and the established one does (where "chance" means looking at outcomes in retrospect, not a roll of the dice). The tweet is saying that founders becoming massively rich is a natural outcome of probability distribution -- huge payoffs require either huge bets at a smaller win multiplier (less "risky") or comparatively smaller bets at a huge win multiplier (more "risky").

smsm42 4y ago

> buying crypto, starting a company, options trading, whatever I think these activities are quite different however. Saying starting a company is the same nature of activity as betting on an extremely volatile asset ignores all the work that goes into successfully creating a working company. Surely, there's no guarantee this work will bring result - but it's still not the same as just betting on random high-volatility assets. Even options trading is not (always) just betting, and for more successful traders probably involves certain amount of knowledge in addition to luck. But I don't think describing creating a company as completely probabilistic activity makes any sense.

Domenic_S 4y ago
The tweet (and me) aren't saying creating a company is "completely probabilistic", just that they're risky. Risky meaning there is an outsized chance vs. an established company that the new one doesn't exist in 5 years and the established one does (where "chance" means looking at outcomes in retrospect, not a roll of the dice). The tweet is saying that founders becoming massively rich is a natural outcome of probability distribution -- huge payoffs require either huge bets at a smaller win multiplier (less "risky") or comparatively smaller bets at a huge win multiplier (more "risky").