On the Edge

From the In the bestselling These professional risk takers--poker players and hedge fund managers, crypto true-believers and blue-chip art collectors--can teach us much about navigating the uncertainty of the 21st century. By embedding within these worlds, Silver offers insight into a range of issues that affect us all, from the frontiers of finance to the future of AI. The River has increasing amounts of wealth and power in our society, and understanding their mindset--including the flaws in their thinking--is key to understanding what drives technology and the global economy today. There are certain commonalities in this otherwise diverse group: high tolerance for risk; appreciation of uncertainty; affinity for numbers; skill at de-coupling; self-reliance and a distrust of the conventional wisdom. For the River, complexity is baked in, and the work is how to navigate it, without going beyond the pale. Taking us behind-the-scenes from casinos to venture capital firms to meetings of the effective altruism movement, <On the Edge< is a deeply-reported, all-access journey into a hidden world of powerbrokers and risk takers.

Auteur

Nate Silver is the founder of FiveThirtyEight and the New York Times bestselling author of The Signal and the Noise. He writes the Substack "Silver Bulletin."

Texte du rabat

"From the New York Times bestselling author of The Signal and the Noise, the definitive guide to our era of risk-and the players raising the stakes In the bestselling The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver showed how forecasting would define the age of Big Data. Now, in this timely and riveting new book, Silver investigates "The River," or those whose mastery of risk allows them to shape-and dominate-so much of modern life. These professional risk takers-poker players and hedge fund managers, crypto true-believers and blue-chip art collectors-can teach us much about navigating the uncertainty of the 21st century. By embedding within the worlds of Doyle Brunson, Peter Thiel, Sam Bankman-Fried, Sam Altman, and many others, Silver offers insight into a range of issues that affect us all, from the frontiers of finance to the future of AI. The River has increasing amounts of wealth and power in our society, and understanding their mindset-including the flaws in their thinking-is key to understanding what drives technology and the global economy today. There are certain commonalities in this otherwise diverse group: high tolerance for risk; appreciation of uncertainty; affinity for numbers; skill at de-coupling; self-reliance and a distrust of the conventional wisdom. For the River, complexity is baked in, and the work is how to navigate it, without going beyond the pale. Taking us behind-the-scenes from casinos to venture capital firms to the FTX inner sanctum to meetings of the effective altruism movement, On the Edge is a deeply-reported, all-access journey into a hidden world of powerbrokers and risk takers"--

Résumé
*The Instant *New York Times Bestseller

“Engaging and entertaining… a glimpse of the economy of the future.” —Tim Wu, New York Times Book Review

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Signal and the Noise, the definitive guide to our era of risk—and the players raising the stakes
&#160;
In the bestselling The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver showed how forecasting would define the age of Big Data. Now, in this timely and riveting new book, Silver investigates “the River,” the community of like-minded people whose mastery of risk allows them to shape—and dominate—so much of modern life.

These professional risk-takers—poker players and hedge fund managers, crypto true believers and blue-chip art collectors—can teach us much about navigating the uncertainty of the twenty-first century. By immersing himself in the worlds of Doyle Brunson, Peter Thiel, Sam Bankman-Fried, Sam Altman, and many others, Silver offers insight into a range of issues that affect us all, from the frontiers of finance to the future of AI.

Most of us don’t have traits commonly found in the River: high tolerance for risk, appreciation of uncertainty, affinity for numbers—paired with an instinctive distrust of conventional wisdom and a competitive drive so intense it can border on irrational. For those in the River, complexity is baked in, and the work is how to navigate it. People in the River have increasing amounts of wealth and power in our society, and understanding their mindset—and the flaws in their thinking— is key to understanding what drives technology and the global economy today.

Taking us behind the scenes from casinos to venture capital firms, and from the FTX inner sanctum to meetings of the effective altruism movement, On the Edge is a deeply reported, all-access journey into a hidden world of power bro­kers and risk-takers.

Échantillon de lecture
Introduction

The Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida, features one nightclub, seven pools, fourteen restaurants, a thirty&#8209;foot&#8209;high indoor waterfall, dozens of pieces of bedazzled&#160; rock&#8209; and&#8209;roll memorabilia, two hundred gaming tables, 1,275 guest rooms, three thousand slot machines, and a glimmering guitar&#8209;shaped hotel that&#160;shoots beams of neon blue light twenty thousand feet into the sky.

Like most casinos—and like most things in South Florida—the Hard Rock is designed to overwhelm your senses and undermine your inhibitions. Picture a casino in your head. If you haven’t been to a place like the Hard Rock or the Wynn in Las Vegas, you’re probably thinking of a dingy “slot barn” full of cigarette smoke and mazelike rows of chirping machines. Indeed, those can be some of the most depressing places on Earth. But at high&#8209;end resorts like the Hard Rock, the mood at busy hours is exuberant. Few places in American life attract a broader cross section of society. There are adults of all ages, races, classes, ethnic groups, and political orientations. There are senior citizens hoping to hit a slot jackpot; groups of bros and gaggles of girls; and attendees of third&#8209;rate trade association conferences compensating for the awkwardness of it all by overindulging in booze and blackjack.

I spent a lot of time in casinos over the course of writing this book.&#160;Needless to say, even the most glamorous ones eventually become tiresome. I sometimes had the feeling of being a professional wedding photographer: everyone was having the time of their life, their very special day. But I knew all the tropes, all the recurring characters—the dude trying to hide from his buddies at the craps table that he was playing beyond his means; the BFFs from the bachelorette party jockeying for pole position when a hot bachelor walked by; the friendly couple from Nebraska having the night of their life playing blackjack before giving all their winnings back twice over.

It was April 2021. I was in Florida for the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown, the first really big poker tournament in the United States since the pandemic. For better or worse, I’d been pretty careful about avoiding crowded indoor spaces until I got vaccinated for COVID&#8209;19. I hadn’t even been on a plane since March 11, 2020, when I learned midflight that Tom Hanks had gotten COVID, that the NBA had suspended its season, that President Trump had shut down travel from Europe—and that my fellow passengers and I had landed in a riskier universe.

But it was a year later, and it was time to gamble. Judging by the crowds at the Hard Rock, a lot of other people were in the same frame of mind. Despite their reputation for risk tolerance, casinos mostly did shut down in the early days of COVID. Even the…