Thread by @MatthiasGalvin, Envy, Hollywood winners, Job, and randomnessA meandering thread inspired by the excellent [...]

Envy, Hollywood winners, Job, and randomness

A meandering thread inspired by the excellent recent substack from @PaulSkallas

My idea: Does embracing randomness give someone a resilience towards envy?

Let me meander...

My first exposure to fat-tailed worlds was Hollywood. Since age ~15-16, I've wanted to be a movie director. (Still do). There's a funny story why I'll tell some time in the future.

After learning about the movie industry I realized that "getting in" isn't straightforward

I read enough stories about people with nothing who became famous writers who commanded huge quotes; I read some--though fewer--about people who were *born* with connections, but then still couldn't make it.

Why?

Randomness

My dear late friend Jim Ward (passed in 2010, RIP) talked with me about this; he was also interested in the movies and also understood randomness.

Does anybody know who the attached picture is?

Of course not; only movie buffs should.

But eeeeeverybody knows who this guy is. (first, Farley Granger; second, James Dean)

Media monoculture--of which Hollywood was, and still is, a part--is fat-tailed: there's a huge leveraged network, and only so much footage & airtime, so the winners win big.

For some reason, it picked James Dean instead of Farley Granger. (setting aside screen presence)

There's an alternate universe where Farley Granger is in Rebel Without a Cause and Giant. Maybe in that universe Colbie Caillat is a megastar with an album written and backed up by Taylor Swift.

How does monoculture decide who wins?

Randomness

I think envy contains a component of the resentment of fate. It didn't come to me until I read the substack. Envy has other features, but still has this question:

"Why did randomness choose someone else instead of me?"

Monoculture rhymes in this SNL bit:

In my own life, over the course of submitting countless query letters, writing several feature-length screenplays (with rewrites), and not getting anywhere, I started to realize:

I just didn't get picked

There was a chance I could have been, but I just wasn't

I'd soothed myself by realizing that it was random

I knew in the back of my mind that most people don't make it, but if they make it they tend to go far. (Fat tails)

I also knew that if I could just continue writing I would, eventually, get there (ergodicity)

Before I'd ever heard the phrase "barbell strategy", I knew it was unwise to go all-in (e.g. move to LA, work replacement-level jobs, writing/auditioning/etc...), that it's wise to do it as a hobby and pair it with a real job so I can pay the bills. (I'm currently an engineer)

Where does all of this get back to envy?

Having read Incerto and really *really* reaffirmed the effect randomness plays on life (in a profound, active way--like, I look for it now)

I just can't help but think we all get lucky, unlucky, and it's only adjacent to behavior

That actions are parallel to randomness was given to me by the Biblical example of Job

He did *everything* right--he's described as perfect and upright, and he *still* accepted the bad:

"What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?" (Job 2:10)

"the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, ... nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."

Ecclasiastes 9:11

The sufficiently complex opaque system (God) is, after all, indistinguishable from randomness

I'm thankful the days good things happen. I'm more thankful for the days when bad things *don't* happen

As He is great and provides in all ways, I also know that God in just in taking away what I have, or giving bad things to me.

He's God.

But a lesson of Incerto applied directly to life:

The guy who's successful now can be *expected* to come back to earth, all things being equal

The person down on their luck can be expected to come back (same qualifier)

The peer who becomes successful got lucky. The peer who has it rough got it unlucky.

I consciously try to envy neither.

Sometimes I will be unlucky. Maybe I can also get lucky, too.

Maybe this is just a variation on Aesop's sour grapes; a dissonance to reconcile the psyche

But it fits within my worldview, and it reminds me, at once, I am smaller than the effects of the world but still capable to harvest success from it

Lachesis hides length from all

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