On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything

they’re both dependent on recreational bettors to make their profits. In

Von Neumann was worried about global warming long before most people were—but mostly he worried about nuclear war, fearing that “mankind might not survive another twenty-five years but instead would become the victim of its own self-destructive inclinations.” However, charged with less abstract

Alameda couldn’t take on much more leverage, she’d reported back. If there was another drawdown, and lenders recalled their loans, it couldn’t pay them back. They could be ruined. SBF didn’t care. There was too much EV at stake.

someone with an informed, original opinion about what the betting line should be, usually formulated through painstaking statistical modeling.

Yudkowsky looks the part of the bearded, middle-aged computer nerd, and his vocabulary is shaped by years of arguing on the internet—his native tongue is Riverian, but his is a regional dialect thick with axioms and allusions and allegories. This particular one referred to a statement

Although Baha Mar is one of the nicest resorts you could imagine, the Bahamas also has among the world’s highest rates of wealth inequality.

of being sentenced to at least twenty years in prison. And yet he hesitated. “I’d have to think about exactly what that meant,” he said after a long pause.

who had a rapid run of success in poker tournaments between 2015 and 2018 before leaving to go into effective altruism–related jobs.

Lucky people “constantly encounter chance opportunities” and try out new things. Lucky people “make good decisions without knowing why.” They listen to their intuition. Lucky people have positive expectations so their “dreams, ambitions and goals have an uncanny knack of coming true.” Lucky people “have an ability to turn their bad luck into good f