51: Engineering Serendipity
Using randomness to your advantage
From Nassim Taleb:
No matter how sophisticated our choices, how good we are at dominating the odds, randomness will have the last word.
Most things in life are random. But we’re good at storytelling, so we retrospectively construct our narrative reality, ignoring the effects of randomness.
Yet, I’d say it’s possible to partially construct randomness, engineer serendipity, and use luck, all to your advantage. You do this by being prepared. That’s when you increase the surface area of your serendipity vehicle.
Work hard to engineer serendipity.