🦉Wise And Otherwise: A Game Of Partial Information
Betting on Uncertainty: Mental Models for Startup Founders, Crypto Degens, and Market Killers
🎙️🎧 Presented by Ed Reif Audio
There are exactly two things that determine how our lives turn out: the quality of our decisions and luck.
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Wise And Otherwise
"I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned."
Poker Parallel: Founders live in ambiguity, hedge fund managers swim in probabilistic chaos, and crypto traders YOLO into the fog. Success lies not in certainty—but in questioning first-order assumptions and iterating on mental models in real-time.
"Poker Books are the belief in the ignorance of experts."
Parallel: Don't blindly copy the Sequoia memo or the All-In podcast playbook. Even elite operators miss meta shifts. Edge comes from thinking independently—like a sharp seeing through a high-stakes bluff.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool."
Parallel: Confirmation bias kills. Whether you're doubling down on a Series B that's clearly going sideways or martingaling into altcoin hell, cognitive dissonance is your silent assassin.
"I don't know anything, but I do know that everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough."
Parallel: The edge is always in the nuance. It's not just EV—it's table dynamics, tech stack momentum, and meta-level game theory. Dig deeper or stay broke.
"We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress."
Parallel: Run tight A/Bs. Run postmortems. In startups or poker, feedback loops are alpha. Your best bet is rapid iteration over being right the first time.
"I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong."
Parallel: Founders who embrace uncertainty raise better rounds. Bettors who accept variance make sharper bets. Certainty is a cope—embrace the chaos.
"The pleasure of finding things out is the greatest reward science has to offer."
Parallel: Solving an opponent's range. Exploiting a market inefficiency. Spotting a narrative before it pumps. The dopamine hit comes from clarity, not clout.
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
Parallel: If you can't build the strategy, you don't own the game. Real founders write the first lines of code. Real traders construct their own models. Real players build the bluff themselves.
