Gambling strategies may seem suicidal, but they are the only path to long-term success.
Written by: GRITCULT
Translated by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News
I assert that gambling is not a flaw in human nature, but rather one of our most significant traits, serving as the engine that drives our evolution, economy, and the development of civilization.
From the structure of the brain to the birth of markets, from ancient exploration to modern technology, the logic of risk and reward has a profound impact on civilization and humanity that far exceeds what we dare to acknowledge.
To bet is to embrace truth.
Life is like flipping a coin
Imagine two tribes in early human civilization, both facing the same mathematical reality of survival.
Tribe A chooses safety; they live near rivers, consume familiar foods, and avoid unknown risks. Their survival strategy is as follows:
Probability of maintaining current caloric intake: 85%
Probability of slight improvement: 15%
Daily expected survival rate: 0.97
Tribe B chooses to take risks; they explore new territories, try unfamiliar fruits, and traverse dangerous terrains. Their strategy is as follows:
Probability of failure (hunger, poisoning, death): 60%
Probability of slight gain: 35%
Probability of major discovery (new hunting grounds, fertile valleys): 5%
Daily expected survival rate: 0.89
Tribe A's conservative strategy seems superior: higher daily survival probability, lower volatility, and predictable outcomes, but compounding is cruel.
After 1000 days:
Survival probability of Tribe A: 0.97^1000 = 0.0000061%
Survival probability of Tribe B: (0.89^1000) × P (major discovery) = the difference in outcomes is enormous
The conservative tribe is destined to go extinct due to slow decline.
The adventurous tribe faces a bimodal outcome: most attempts will perish, but a small portion will not only survive but thrive, ultimately dominating.
The jackpot paradox in evolution
Under the influence of compounding, the arithmetic mean (average expected outcome) and the geometric mean (long-term median outcome) can diverge catastrophically.
Conservative strategies provide a false sense of security, yet they are doomed to fail.
Gambling strategies may seem suicidal, but they are the only path to long-term success.
In life, the greatest risk is not taking any risks.
You must take risks, fail, learn, and then reap enormous rewards.
Conservative strategy (Tribe A):
Daily return: 0.97 (sustaining a 3% decline)
Geometric mean: daily -3%
Extinction time: approximately 115 days (ln(0.5)/ln(0.97))
Gambling strategy (Tribe B):
Daily return: [-40%, +10%, +500%], with probabilities of [0.6, 0.35, 0.05]
Arithmetic mean: daily +5.5%
Geometric mean: most paths yield daily -5.8%, while the jackpot path yields +∞
95% of attempts will go extinct faster, but 5% will dominate.
Averages cannot be optimized.
You must strive to optimize for the possibility of extreme positive outcomes, even if it increases the probability of failure, but you must take risks; it is the only way.
We are the descendants of the minority who won at gambling, reaping the rewards of evolution. Everyone alive today carries the genetic imprint of ancestors who chose volatility. The dopamine stimulation from uncertain rewards is not merely entertainment; it is a survival mechanism designed to optimize multiplicative rather than additive outcomes.
The winner-takes-all mathematics of innovation
Small innovations can yield exponential, disproportionate returns.
What happens when Tribe B's adventures succeed? They discover fire, agriculture, or more advanced hunting techniques, gaining a permanent survival advantage.
Before innovation:
- Two tribes: 2.1 children per family, population growth rate: approximately 0.5% per generation
After innovation (Tribe B begins to develop agriculture):
Tribe A: still 2.1 children per family
Tribe B: 2.3 children per family (nutritional improvements yield a 10% advantage)
A mere 10% reproductive advantage can trigger genetic optimization.
After n generations:
Populations of Tribe A and B: P₀ × (1.005)ⁿ, P₀ × (1.015)ⁿ
Proportion of Tribe B in total population = (1.015)ⁿ / [(1.005)ⁿ + (1.015)ⁿ]
Generation 100: Tribe B comprises 67% of the population
Generation 300: Tribe B comprises 97% of the population
Within 300 generations (approximately 7500 years), a 10% reproductive advantage leads to the near-total replacement of the conservative population's genes.
Genetic studies repeatedly confirm this:
Y-chromosome Adam: one male lineage expanded to comprise about 60% of all men today
Mitochondrial Eve: one female lineage became the matrilineal ancestor of all modern humans
Lactose tolerance provided about a 2-3% survival advantage in dairy farming cultures 7500 years ago. This slight advantage compounded over 300 generations, growing from 0.1% to 35% in humans, with a frequency increase of 35,000%.
The super-gambling of evolution:
The "stakes" (genetic mutations) cost almost nothing, just one DNA base pair
Failure rate is about 99.99%, as most mutations are neutral or harmful
Successful bets yield exponential compounding until they dominate.
This pattern repeats on various scales:
Individuals: those with more advanced tools can better feed their families
Tribes: groups with more advanced agriculture can support 100 times the population
Species: a breakthrough (language, fire, agriculture) leads to global dominance
DNA reflects this: a little innovation can yield exponential compounding, and pioneers will reap disproportionate rewards. The return structure tends to favor extreme outcomes rather than moderate ones.
We did not evolve to avoid risks but to calculate risks and bet on asymmetric upside potential.
When we began to roll the bones
The oldest written records are about 5000 years old. The oldest dice are even older than writing, meaning gambling predates language. Before the emergence of laws, money, and cities, we were already playing games of chance. We rolled sheep knuckles, drew lots, and created meaning from randomness.
In Mesopotamia, dice were spiritual tools. Ancient Chinese used the randomness in the I Ching to divine fate. Romans rolled dice before political decisions. In the Mahabharata, a kingdom fell due to a single bet. Chance is not independent of society; it is the foundation of society.
Gambling became a primitive form of resource allocation, a ritualized source of conflict, and a means of delineating social hierarchies. When you do not know what will happen, you roll the dice and agree to accept the outcome. It simulates risk in a controllable manner; gambling is part of our culture.
Better gambling systems
As human civilization continues to evolve, our bets are also upgrading. We engage in transoceanic trade, uncertain if ships will return; we wage wars without guarantees of victory; we build cathedrals that take 300 years, unsure if anyone will complete them. But we become smarter, constructing tools to manage our gambling instincts and scale them.
The most trusted institutions in modern society are merely formalized gambling systems:
Modern enterprises: diversifying investment risks
Insurance: born from maritime trade in Renaissance Europe, pooling risks
Lotteries: used to fund Harvard, the Great Wall, and churches
Stock markets: speculative machines built on future beliefs
Democracy: structured gambling about who should lead us
Civilization rises by taming risk, riding the tiger rather than avoiding it, and sharing the excess returns. When someone takes the risk to innovate, over time, that innovation benefits all of humanity.
The social contract is a bet on each other.
Why we need to gamble
The more we try to eliminate uncertainty in life, the more people will seek it.
We engage in stable jobs, pay for insurance, and then log into Robinhood to bet our savings on hot stocks. We learn about cryptocurrencies, chasing jackpots.
Why? Gambling is existential.
Gambling is a practice of fate; we roll the dice to re-experience the thrill of gambling. Games are animals' rehearsals for real life, and humans uniquely created gambling to simulate high-risk situations.
Entrepreneurship is a socially acceptable form of gambling. Startups are full of volatility, with founders betting time, status, and capital. Investors seek outliers rather than averages. The venture capital model is built on jackpot logic: a few successful cases can cover all costs. The right kind of gambling is creative; it drives exploration, innovation, and discovery, turning speculation into signal.
When gambling works well, it does not destroy; it creates.
Gambling is a force for good. It is about facing the unknown with courage, creating order from chaos, and transforming randomness into ritual.
We consume alternative risks. We watch others play. We crave stakes but fear the consequences. The problem may not be that we gamble too much, but that we gamble poorly.
The risk of super-gambling is not in flipping coins but in doing so aimlessly.
We should not try to eliminate gambling but rather restore its evolutionary advantages. Reintroduce risk as a tool for transformation. Today's children are super-gambling; all our applications, all the surfaces of human interaction. The only way forward is to accept this and acknowledge the importance of speculation.
A future without risk may sound like a utopia, but it is inhuman.
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