You want to know what’s the next big thing going to be
You want to know what’s the next big thing NOT going to be
You want to know where to put your resources: your time, your energy, your capital, your attention
You live in the world therefore you’re interested in the world therefore you’re interested where the world is heading
Innovation is being made
Time and energy and capital are poured into innovation
Are there too many resources being poured into innovation?
Will the returns be worth the investment?
Long term — obviously yes
(Assuming we don’t destroy ourselves)
Short term? Neither “yes” nor “no”.
Short term it’s UNKNOWABLE
Short term it’s unknowable
Why?
Because innovation is OF THE NEW
Therefore it is NOT KNOWN
Therefore it cannot be estimated
It cannot be valued precisely
I’m “bullish” on the future
I play long term
Longer term than me myself
If I don’t get paid in this lifetime — I don’t care
I know what is right
I don’t presume to be able to appraise the short term value of those investments
I hope it’s positive
I believe it’s positive
But if it’s not — at least it’s positive long term
Innovation eventually yields 10-fold and 100-fold and 1000-fold and infinite-fold return
Thus you can’t overestimate innovation
It eventually always yields INCOMPREHENSIBLE RETURNS
But it WILL be a gamble short-term
You don’t know exactly when the breakthrough is going to occur
It is foolish to ever doubt innovation
It’s anti-progress and anti-human
Doubt the way this innovation is being attempted
But you can’t doubt the innovation itself
Nor can you appraise it
Now,
Can we appraise tradition?
We can’t either
The traditional, the enduring, the perennial, it is unchanging and lasting, and in that it is comprehensible and “known”
However the exact method by which something works is UNKNOWN
Therefore tradition CANNOT be OVERESTIMATED either
Because you can’t know the unknown consequences of breaking with tradition
Therefore most debates involving innovation vs tradition are foolish:
—you cannot appraise the value of innovation, nor it’s trajectory
—you cannot appraise the value of tradition
To view it as such simplistic dichotomy is foolish, meaningless.
You must understand WHEN there is room for innovation — and when there is no need to change a thing.
And when there is room for innovation — you really can’t lose by going ALL IN,
And when there is a profoundly tested traditional method — you’re really best of adhering to it faithfully
How do you know the difference?
One way would be to take lindy effect into account.
The more changeless something has been throughout the entire world history — the greater the chance that you are not going to improve it over your lifetime… nor many lifetimes
Conversely: the more something HAS been changing — the greater the chance that there’s an improvement available
This quickly creates a simple organisation between the WORLDLY MATTERS, and the SPIRITUAL
There really hasn’t been many changes with the way humans are designed
There has been many changes with the way the world works
It suggests LIFE-living more simply. Try it.
It also suggests rapid exploration and experimentation of the world. Try it.
The “worldly” itself organises itself into more-perennial and more-changing,
There has been matters which we have been successful at improving
There has been matters which we have NOT been successful at improving, at all.
You really cannot overestimate the rate of innovation of that which is already rapidly improving.
This sounds obvious and tautological: “what improves is likely to improve”
But it’s not
We often make mistake of trying to fix that which is not broken
And we constantly underestimate the innovation
If you simply looked at that which we were successful at improving and that which we weren’t successful at improving — you’d know which promises greater chances of improvement
To wrap it up:
You cannot overestimate innovation
You cannot overestimate tradition
Best you can do is guide yourself with the lindy effect: looking at the rate of change of given field
Though it may sound simplistic — this heuristic really holds profound meaning.
Don’t let yourself be beguiled by the noise of forecasters and bears and bulls and journalists and all the rest of the narrow-minded fools
If it’s growing — it’s will be growing really fucking fast — and you can’t appraise it
It it’s changeless — likely there is nothing you can do about it — and you better beware doing something about it
This simple heuristic is more truth then the 99% of stupid noise and “clever” noise that spams our ears
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