My first objection to Nate Silver’s book is the title, or to be perfectly accurate, the subtitle: The Art of Risking Everything.
I can only assume that some publisher or agent demanded this subtitle, because it seems to go against a fair amount of what is actually in the book. Risking everything is stupid, as Nate himself seems to say. In fact, he brings up “the Kelly criterion,” a formula for betting that ensures that you never lose everything. He says “going full Kelly,” e.g. betting 16% of your stake on a wager that has a 40% chance of losing, while mathematically defensible, is generally thought to be too risky by most gamblers, because if applied as suggested, it can result in having almost your entire bankroll wiped out for a long period before recovery.
Furthermore, he seems to find Sam Bankman-Fried, the FTX convicted fraud, who thought Kelly was not risky enough, to be something like a sociopath. He quotes a witness from Bankman-Fried’s trial:
“Q. Did he ever give other coin-flip examples?
“A. Yeah. I guess he also talked about this in the context of thinking about what was good for the world, saying that he would be happy to flip a coin, if it came up tails and the world was destroyed, as long as if it came up heads the world would be like more than twice as good.”[1]
So even Nate seems to think “risking everything,” far from being an “art” anyone ought to be practicing, is a terrible idea.
I am put in mind of the film “Fight Club.” The most famous quote from that film is from Brad Pitt’s character, Tyler Durden:
“The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club!”
As a former boxer, bouncer, and rugby player[2], I have always thought that this line was wrong. Because it must have been written by someone who has never been punched in the face.
The ACTUAL first rule of Fight Club is: DON’T JOIN FIGHT CLUB. Any club where you are repeatedly punched in the face is going to maim or blind you, scramble your brains, shorten your life, and make you what James Joyce dubbed “an outcast from life’s feast.” So DON’T JOIN FIGHT CLUB.
And never, ever, EVER “risk everything.” Only someone who has always had someone to bail them out could possibly think that “the art of risking everything” is anything but the dumbest idea of all time.
We have had several post-World War II generations of suburban-bred, pampered, sheltered kids who think there is no worse fate than to be bored in one’s well-appointed home or one’s well-funded school. Chuck Palahniuk, author of the novel Fight Club, might not have fallen into this category. But the vast majority of the guys who bought his book or watched the movie sure did. And some unknown number of them maybe tried to replicate the movie. And are still suffering as a result. Probably some small part of the rise of MMA can be attributed to the film.
These are the kind of people who are eager to think that somewhere, outside their comfortable boring corporate existences, “risking everything,” perhaps at the poker table, will lend meaning to their lives. It won’t. It will wreck their lives, as well as the lives of the people who will be forced to step in and clean up their messes.
As I say, subtitles are often the province of publishers, so I can’t really be too hard on Nate for this one. But it IS a bad one, and contradicts what he actually says in the book.
But don’t join Fight Club. And do NOT “risk everything.”
[1] Nate Silver, On the Edge, https://books.apple.com/us/book/on-the-edge/id6474822705
[2] Lousy at each.
