Life is full of randomness:

Life is full of randomness.

I first heard about the concept from Nicholas Nasim Taleb in his famous book ‘Fooled by Randomness.’

From Wikipedia:

Human beings underestimate the existence of randomness. They tend to explain random outcomes as non-random. They overestimate cause and effect while also viewing the world as more explainable and rational than it really is.

Life is super random.

Why you are on the path you’re on doing the thing you’re doing and sitting where you are now is extremely random.

So much of that is outside your control.

The story of your life is a series of random occurrences that could push you down multiple different timelines, kinda like that Community episode.

This doesn’t just happen with people, but also in markets.

Things happen that are random, unexplained and rationalized after the fact as being possible – black swan events.

Things people don’t see.

You always have to account for those things in life.

You’ll get thrown curve balls all the time.

Opportunities and moments with people that are completely unexpected that alter the direction of your life.

Meeting a smart Korean kid in public school who was also trying to get to the UK was the person who told me about studying at the University of St. Andrews.

My supervisor screwing over our class in medical school and not allowing us to get residency jobs for at least a year was the reason I ended up outside of medicine.

Being born to a father who knew about healthcare venture capital, a super niche industry was the reason I became a venture capitalist.

I didn’t select any of these things.

But I also saw opportunity.

I saw things that other people hadn’t even considered.

Moving across the world at 17.

Leaving medicine at 23.

Living in Amsterdam, Montreal and Toronto within the span of a few years.

I could never have predicted that as a kid.

I thought I had my whole life planned out in front of me when I left for medical school.

Become a doctor and work as a physician in Canada the rest of my life.

Then life happened.

Randomness happened.

You can’t plan for anything in this world because the future is entirely uncertain.

Life never happens the way you intend.

You do things you hadn’t considered before because experiences happen that change the direction of your life.

Random people, experiences and moments that are entirely unpredictable.

You need more of that spontaneity in your life.

You need to increase the chance of having random experiences.

It completely opens your eyes to the world.

The world you think exists and the one that actually does are two entirely different things.

Most people have no idea what it’s like to grow up in a country halfway around the world.

How similar and different it is to the way we grow up.

No matter what language or religion, everyone has the same struggles.

Most people are just trying to survive.

Even the thieves and criminals of the world, they’re just dealing with the circumstances they’re dealt with.

They may grow up in bad environments where their chances of random events happening are not positive. Being abused, seeing drugs and alcohol, having no family support system, not being able to go to school, not having parents around in your life, etc.

All this shit really affects you.

It increases your risk of mental health disorders and puts you in bad circumstances.

And without your brain functioning at full capacity, you can’t reach your potential.

These experiences hold you back.

They shape your beliefs and experiences about the world.

So many people are born in terrible circumstances where no one’s ever doing anything nice for them.

For all the successes, how many people were in just the wrong place at the wrong time vs. being in the right place at the right time?

Meeting that one person. Going to that one place. Having that one teacher.

So much of my life is because of other people.

What they saw in me, what they allowed me to do, what they showed me.

Then this past year, I just decided to start sharing some of the writing to myself and may have seen history before it happened.

If the crash happens like I think it will, people will see it as random but it wasn’t.

The world saw an early sign in January amongst the backdrop of the biggest monetary intervention in history.

The US Federal Reserve never stopped quantitative easing after 2008.

They’re still buying $120B of mortgage-backed securities because of the fallout of the last crisis.

All these things intertwine together.

The rise of the Internet. Gamestop squeeze. Social media. Covid. Hedge Funds. Archegos. Occupy Wall Street. Robert Schiller Ratios. Interviews from Grantham, Druckenmiller and Marks. The rise of crypto. NFTs.

They’re all connected.

You just needed someone with enough randomness in his life to see it.