In the aftermath of the earthquake in Turkey, people asked scientists why they couldn’t predict the earthquake. Why - with all the expensive equipment, the brilliant minds - didn’t they didn’t see it coming? And the scientists gave a very curious answer. They said that they can predict an earthquake is going to happen, say three hours from now. What they can’t predict is the size of the earthquake. That’s weird. If you can predict the earthquake, it’s just a small step to predicting its size, right? But this taps into a concept that’s a bit confusing, even for me. In chaos theory, it’s called non-determinism. And the gist of it is simple. For a complex system (complex being anything that has a wide variety of factors acting together), the same trigger that causes a small event is the same trigger that causes a large event. Think of two people coming from the same family, but one turning into a billionaire, and the other turning into a deadbeat. In Turkey’s case, the trigger for a small earthquake was the same trigger for a big earthquake. So as the scientist observing this, you can identify that a trigger has occurred, and know an earthquake is coming. You just don’t know whether it’s a big one or a small one.
Outliers
See, for any system, there will always be outliers - really successful people in this case. And these successful people will always get one question. ‘What’s the path to success?’ And they will always have an answer. Something along the lines of work hard, pray, be smart, work hard some more, and boom! Success! And it’s a path that’s been laid out by so many times, you’d wonder why it ever gets asked. But here’s the thing. If their path to success - the one they keep on preaching in seminars, talks and interviews - actually worked, then it should be replicable, right? And there should be a lot more people with the same level of success - or at least getting there - right? But the wealth gap is actually rising. And the percentage of wealthy people - relatively speaking - is still the same, if not dropping. If it works, why are there more of us than them? Here’s the thing: deep down, you know whatever answer they give is bullshit. You might not want to admit it, but you know. You do. You only listen to them because you idolize them. You assume them experts. And they know they can say anything, and you’ll eat it up.
Riding The Wave
There’s a tech Youtuber by the name of Marquess Brownlee who attributes his success mainly to ‘riding the wave.’ Of course, there’s the aspect of hard work and all. But in one of his videos, he plainly says that he just happened to be at the top of a wave, and he just rode it. YouTube was just about to explode in popularity. Smartphones and technology in general were about to explode. These gadgets were about to stop being tools, and more like extensions of ourselves. The choice of phone was now more important than it had ever been before. And he just happened to be making videos on this same topic - just happened being the key words here. Why? It wasn’t because he knew it was going to be big. It wasn’t because he had a master plan to become the biggest tech youtuber. He was a geek, and he liked doing it. Simple. And as he was doing it, he got caught perfectly in the wave. Now, there were millions of youtubers even then, and probably hundreds in the same space of tech. There were probably tens of people doing the same exact thing he was doing. Probably working harder than he was. But they we’re off by just a little, either to the left or to the right of the wave. And they got swallowed by the wave. They got sent to the graveyard.
If you go and look at the billionaire index today, among the things you’ll notice is that it is full of tech billionaires. If you were to ask me, while these people worked their asses off to get to where they are, the main factor in their success is that they rode the wave better than anyone else. Tech was just about to hit the ground running. The internet was about to become the center of our lives. The internet back then is what ChatGPT and AI is today. A whole new frontier to what’s possible. The possibilities were endless. But even in a world of endless possibilities, only a few survive the test of time. And as with non-determinism, companies in the same field, doing essentially the same things, had entirely different outcomes. Google is a behemoth today. Yahoo only exists on the fringes. Facebook basically owns social media. Myspace, along with others like 2Go (remember this!) are dead. The groundwork for Spotify was laid by Napster. And companies like Netflix owe their success to Pirate Bay. Of the thousands of promising startups in the 90’s, only a handful - literally a handful - remain today. The rest got sent to the graveyard.
The Graveyard
Someone created a website dedicated to every project that Google has killed. And if you go look at the contents, you’ll be super shocked at the number of projects that are on there. Why would Google dedicate so much time to developing a product, then kill it? Well, it’s because Google understand non-determinism pretty well. They know that for every hundred projects they invest in, only one or two will turn out to be successes. It’s a matter of setting off as many triggers as they can. 95% of the time, they’ll turn a Google Hangouts, Google Glass or Google Duo. But if they try hard enough, they’ll eventually land on a Gmail, YouTube or Google Ads. And the successes are not exactly the ones they expect. There’ll be projects they have high hopes for that just don’t work. And there’ll be others that blow up to billion dollar companies, almost completely unexpected. Just read the story of how Gmail started and you’ll see what I mean.
Rich Spirit
We don’t like to look at the graveyard. It’s cold, dark and depressing. And most of all, it’s scary. It’s a reminder of the reality that no matter how far we run, we’re always the same distance from the ditch. In a world so obsessed with pleasure, happiness and fulfillment, who would want to pay attention to the graveyard? Why let ourselves go into withdrawal when we can jump on the next high? We’d rather chase the hedonistic fantasy, even though there’s an overwhelming chance that we won’t ever get it. And without realizing it, this chase for pleasure only ends in pain. Maybe that’s being human. Having hope. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t chase after whatever you want. I’m not that big of an asshole (hard to believe given the last few articles). All I’m saying is that there’s a lot of hindsight bias in the advice successful people give. Kendrick, in ‘Rich Spirit,’ states that ‘celebrity does not mean integrity.’ These people don’t know as much as you think they do. There’s an assumption that their path is replicable. But their wave has already passed, and taken its casualties with it. You just have to find your wave, and hope to hell you can ride it.