On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything
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NAMED A MOST-ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2024 BY FT, The Guardian, and The Sunday Times 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.
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I seem to be an early reader of this, and notably an early reader with a strongly negative opinion, so I feel compelled to write a review for it.I'm an engineer, and by nature I tend to like numerical approaches to problems, thinking probabilistically, and priding myself on feeling ‘rational' about how I view situations. I've followed Nate Silver in one way or another for years, and generally remember enjoying [b:The Signal and the Noise 13588394 The Signal and the Noise Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't Nate Silver https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1355058876l/13588394.SY75.jpg 19175796]. I saw that Silver had written this book, had a spare Audible credit, and picked it up quickly.It's not good.As other (even positive) reviews have stated, there isn't a strong sense of a theme throughout the book. The closest I could discern is that Nate Silver knows notable people and isn't afraid to name-drop, and that some elites of the world think about things in a Super Special Numerical way and that's what makes them elite. But lest you worry he thinks too highly of the elites, he occasionally tosses in examples of valid criticism from the rest of society. And don't worry, he alone is uniquely qualified to have a foot in both that elite circle (telling stories of parties and exclusive interviews he's had) and still rub shoulders with the rest of us. Perhaps in an effort to not spurn his Silicon Valley friends, he also comes across as strangely uncritical of figures like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Sam Bankman-Fried, among others. These are people you can't ‘both sides' your way around, or hedge an opinion towards, and it feels weaselly that he does.[As a total aside for audiobook listeners: Silver does his own narration for this performance, and it is actively bad. Most punctuation is treated as a paragraph stop, to the extent that the latter halves of many sentences are confusing as sometimes I couldn't tell if it was a new paragraph or not. He also tries to imitate the voices of some people he references, notably Steve Wynn and Peter Thiel, in a way that I can only imagine is incredibly insulting to them. It was such a bad narration that I genuinely questioned his decision-making in other elements of the publishing process. You've been warned.]I wouldn't in good conscience recommend this book to anyone, I certainly doubt I learned anything from it, and it's turned me off of paying attention to Silver's future endeavours. If you want to learn more about FTX I'd recommend [b:Number Go Up 123276708 Number Go Up Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall Zeke Faux https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1687140968l/123276708.SY75.jpg 145311112], and if you want a better take on some of the concepts Silver covers in the book I'd recommend [b:Rationality 56224080 Rationality Steven Pinker https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1618510588l/56224080.SY75.jpg 87575630] or [b:Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World 41795733 Range Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World David Epstein https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1550048292l/41795733.SY75.jpg 65183769].
The discussion around poker in the first half was interesting, and I think Nate Silver is on to something when he contrasts the Riverians vs. people from the Village, but the book is overly long (the multiple chapters on SBF certainly don't help).
