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🧵 Thread (20 tweets)

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 5 years ago

the big lesson of survivor bias is that you should optimize for being a survivor

974 205
8/16/2020
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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 5 years ago
Replying to @visakanv

this sounds like a smartass tweet but I'm totally serious you can't win if you lose so learn to not lose most major failure conditions are avoidable with a little bit of foresight, planning, study, etc etc. just analyze failures and don't do/be that

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8/16/2020
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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 5 years ago
Replying to @visakanv

most businesses fail because IME most (more than half of) businesses are started by people who don't do any due diligence, ie using your life savings to start a restaurant without ever having worked in one, or even read about the specifics of the struggles involved

148 6
8/16/2020
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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 5 years ago
Replying to @visakanv

most marriages similarly end in divorce because https://t.co/OkmWXRWmAR

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• over 5 years ago

Fun with stats: There are 4 people in the world. Alice, Bob, Charles and Denise Alice and Bob are happily married Charles and Denise have gotten married and divorced 4 times In this world, 80% of marriages lead to divorce

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8/16/2020
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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 5 years ago
Replying to @visakanv

failures are inevitable, but the trick is that you can fail early or fail late. isolate your failures as early as possible. do 100 pitches. you likely won't even get that far https://t.co/of4b9mb8sN

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 5 years ago

She pitched 50 versions of the show https://t.co/97mcHee0cJ

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8/16/2020
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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 5 years ago
Replying to @visakanv

try to fail (intelligently) as much as possible, as cheaply as possible, as early as possible. you learn what's right by eliminating everything that's wrong. generally can do that a lot faster and a lot cheaper than people seem to assume https://t.co/N44oPPYN7V

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• over 6 years ago

One of the biggest tells that someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about: glossing over addressing resource constraints, or saying things that imply infinite resources. Effectively everything is resource-constrained, & seasoned practitioners are especially sensitive to this https://t.co/DZi8XbYQqx

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8/16/2020
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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 5 years ago
Replying to @visakanv

then when you win, after decades of putting in the work, and more importantly, avoiding the big open pits in the ground that everyone around you keeps falling into, they'll say– well, it's survivor bias. 😅

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8/16/2020
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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 5 years ago
Replying to @visakanv

https://t.co/6FSfw8RZQp

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 5 years ago

@jilliancyork part of this frame is like, simulated failures count! eg if you think "I could do X, but X is a bad decision because it will lead to bad outcome, so I'm going to do Y instead", that counts! you just fail in your head instead of IRL

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8/16/2020
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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• almost 5 years ago
Replying to @visakanv

https://t.co/tvh6a0HatF

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 5 years ago

people are really not used to dealing with someone who's well-prepared

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12/7/2020
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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• over 4 years ago
Replying to @visakanv

thread https://t.co/IJiNbfeFZ0

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Luca Dellanna@DellAnnaLuca• over 4 years ago

WHY IS ERGODICITY IMPORTANT? AN EXAMPLE My cousin was born in a mountain village in the French Alps. Like many there, he learned to ski before reading. I am a good skier, but I remember the humiliation when I was 14 and he was 6, seeing him surpass me, swift as a bullet.

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12/17/2020
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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• over 3 years ago
Replying to @visakanv

you can increase your exposure to luck https://t.co/OqmTWpYNpU

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• over 5 years ago

here is a bit of my summary of @pmarca's 2007 blogpost about James Austin's 4 kinds of luck, from his 1978 book Chase, Chance and Creativity 1. blind luck 2. add variability through tinkering 3. add discernment 3. add unique frame of reference https://t.co/VC2iCbu8kk

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3/30/2022
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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• over 3 years ago
Replying to @visakanv

big part of all of this is solving for distribution https://t.co/7y1afBu9W0

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3/30/2022
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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• over 2 years ago
Replying to @visakanv

thread on risk https://t.co/5irdnGdMBd

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 6 years ago

to me, it is risky to not have: - alt models of reality - alt sources of meaning - alt scenes and social graphs to hang out in - alt identities - alt jobs/income sources they don't teach *any* of this in school, & people end up depressed, suicidal, abusive... it's insane to me

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2/2/2023
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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• over 2 years ago
Replying to @visakanv

buffett talking about once-in-a-century cautionary news stories he’d put up on the walls to remind himself to optimize for survival https://t.co/ZzPZ4T4PGV

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3/28/2023
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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• over 1 year ago
Replying to @visakanv

“everything happens if you stay alive” - al pacino https://t.co/jMQAEdsXf5

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2/18/2024
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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• almost 4 years ago
Replying to @visakanv

a slightly silly example that does still illustrate the fundamental principle https://t.co/d8EmIIl0qI

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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• almost 4 years ago

@alt1na1 when you see grain spilling like that, don’t wait, run immediately https://t.co/eNi8IAuyrw

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10/4/2021
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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• almost 4 years ago
Replying to @visakanv

it only seems silly until you’re the only guy who survived the granary explosion

34 1
10/4/2021
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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• over 3 years ago
Replying to @visakanv

do not touch unexploded ammo https://t.co/waQDBTKyX0

15 1
3/1/2022
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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 1 year ago
Replying to @visakanv

do not drink mystery liquid https://t.co/EgbpC9yo5V

10 0
7/11/2024
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Visakan Veerasamy@visakanv• about 1 year ago
Replying to @visakanv

do not hang out near flooding bodies of water https://t.co/tQmAuuLVAk

14 0
9/9/2024