Taking a number of small but extreme non-consensus risks means you’ll be wrong and pay a penalty for most of these risky bets. It’ll also mean two other things:
one, you’ll get feedback that very few will have access to because most are too worried to take non-consensus risks and being wrong, and
two, you give yourself the chance to benefit from the upside of that risk, should it work out in your favor.
This is at the heart of what Nassim Taleb calls the barbell strategy. Instead of going with consensus_ all the time_, go with consensus most of the time and non-consensus the rest of the time. A dual strategy that gives you a shot at the upside while preventing total ruin because you’ve put all eggs in one basket.
Fast forward a few years. You’re 45 and you have a change of heart. You wonder why you decided against kids so early.
Now if you had taken that weekend or maybe a few of them with friends with kids, you would’ve given yourself the chance to have access to high-quality information. Where you would have gotten to know what life’s like with kids, how it may affect your relationship with your partner, and how it may affect you personally. You chose to not go down that route because it was non-consensus and because you were afraid of being non-consensus-wrong.
Taking a number of small but extreme non-consensus risks means you’ll be wrong and pay a penalty for most of these risky bets. It’ll also mean two other things: one, you’ll get feedback that very few will have access to because most are too worried about not being non-consensus wrong, and two, you give yourself the chance to benefit from the upside of that risk, should it work out in your favor.
This is at the heart of what Nassim Taleb calls the barbell strategy. Instead of going with consensus_ all the time_, go with consensus most of the time and non-consensus the rest of the time. A dual strategy, as set out by the two extremes in a barbell.
Now I’m not saying you should have kids or not have kids. I’m asking, how are you deciding? What position are you putting yourself in that gives you access to information that could influence your decision?
Instead of tightly controlling every choice down the middle, we can pair assured safe consensus behavior with small extreme non-consensus risks.
We look for symmetry in our decision-making. That makes us feel consistent in our thinking. But if we are wrong, there goes the one basket into which we had put all our eggs.