Once you get past the poker, "On the Edge" is a very deep exploration of concepts known and unknown. You'll feel like there's an alternative universe out there, and not only are you not a member, do you really care?
I took a philosophy course in college that was deadly, if for no other reason than it was taught at eight in the morning by an aged guy who seemed ready to pass. Philosophy is not something I think about, never mind the fact that it does not pay.
But it turns out there are all these philosophers and philosophies in the tech/bleeding edge world.
Like "Effective Altruism." I heard that bandied about when SBF (Sam Bankman-Fried), got in trouble. I thought it was just a guy using his money to achieve good ends. But NO! It's a whole philosophy. And it's in battle with the Rationalists. Really.
And then there are the philosophers debating doom. Whether the world is going to end and when. And how many people have to die in order to rub out humanity.
Really.
As for Sam Bankman-Fried...
What you've got to know is it was the emperor's new clothes. Everybody bought the act, the VCs, the investors. Here you've got a guy from MIT who shows up in shorts and spews all this opportunity, all this money to be made, he must be right, let's give him boatloads of cash.
But when Silver sits down with him even before the FTX crash, SBF says such insane things it's amazing, anybody listening wouldn't have thought he was off his rocker. SBF was all in, with concepts that made no sense, that relied on trust that people don't have. Like we'll put all your money in a black box and you'll get a token in exchange, and then everybody will get rich when the tokens go up! Who is going to put millions into that? Hard-earned cash for air? That didn't come to be.
But crypto...
Crypto started as a new banking system, with traceable assets, that would reduce friction in exchanges.
That's not what it ended up to be. But Andreessen Horowitz is so deep into it, it wants its return, even though crypto is now a giant casino. And casinos are built on marks. Are you sitting at home really thinking you know more than, or even as much as, the people in control, who do this every day?
This is what has happened in politics. Which leads to crypto. All the authorities have been taken off the table. People are led into the wilderness by a pariah, telling them riches are in the offing.
Well, in truth many crypto investors lose money. There's little talk about this because the losses are spread over such a large number of people.
Furthermore, just like Vegas itself, you hear about the winners, but the losers?
And then it comes down to AI, which the average person thinks they understand but they don't.
As for being ready for prime time... I was reading Emily Nussbaum's highly reviewed but unread by many book on reality TV, "Cue the Sun!" If you haven't been a consistent viewer of reality television, don't bother. But if you watched, you'll learn some interesting stuff, like the only person who actually lived in the "Real World" house during the first season was Julie.
Anyway, Nussbaum writes in depth about "The Bachelor," a show I've never watched. And talks about Trista Rehn, how everybody on the inside believed she'd win the first season, and how she ultimately married that firefighter, had kids and has lived happily ever after.
I decided to Google her. And Google's AI told me that TRISTA WAS A FIREFIGHTER!
Yes, it made a mistake. A HUGE mistake. And if I hadn't known a little about Trista and her life, I would have bought it.
So if you're depending on AI... You never know when it will hallucinate, get it wrong.
But the story is AI combs data, on the web. And it can come up with remarkably relevant and correct answers, but also can be totally wrong. So the AI companies hire humans to correct it. And it keeps getting smarter and smarter but does it ever truly get smart enough?
But the bottom line is you type a question... Silver analogizes it to a symphony orchestra. The conductor assigns everybody their part, they go off to practice...
Every word is assigned a token. Those in charge of each token go in search of answers. But the violins work together, before they report back to the conductor.
And all the instruments are working on different tokens simultaneously. And at the end, they show up with their info, pop it into a translator and voila, you've got an answer.
But how exactly did AI do it?
What is happening on those token searches. How are the different instruments/token owners collaborating? THEY DON'T KNOW, ONLY THAT IT WORKS!
Really.
You'll learn all this and more if you read "On the Edge."
But you're going to really have to want to read it. Because it's five hundred pages long. And it's a mess, it doesn't hold together. There's this overall theme of risk, as evidenced in poker, devolving into game theory and other mathematical concepts, but then there's detailed investigations of Vegas, Silicon Valley, crypto, AI, that really don't need to be in the same book. Yes, they're tied together by risk...but Silver is so deep into his endeavor that he can't see the forest for the trees. Like a college student delivering a paper in order to get a grade, to evidence completion, comprehensibility and quality are not reached, never mind even being the goals.
However, there is a lot of stimulating info contained within the book's pages. But very few will read it. Because they've never had to read a book like this. People don't want to put in hours to read something that is not straightforward, that they have to mentally wrestle with.
Unfortunately, that's where the rewards are.
Will there be better books on these subjects?
Well, you've got Michael Lewis, a great writer whose belief in himself and his ideas is so strong that he was totally snookered by SBF, never mind the parents in "Blind Side."
And the people interviewing Silver... They've got neither the time nor the inclination to read the book. who's going to dedicate in excess of ten hours to do so, they're busy building their brand, becoming famous!
But if you want to know more about America, the divide between Silicon Valley and the east coast intelligentsia, you will gain a ton of insight from reading "On the Edge."
But be forewarned, it's not easy.
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