Every Shot Costs You...

Now, gentlemen, you didn't really think that I was going to allow Wayne Gretzky to have the last word on this issue. And by that, I mean the quote that I cited myself, the quote that's attributed to him typically, you miss 100% of the shots that you don't take. Now, as with all things in life, there is a bit of complexity to this beyond the surface level analysis of it, obviously.

And so, yes, technically speaking, 100% of the shots you don't take, you miss. For example, you might have all the cards in life stacked in your favor. You might be tall, attractive, wealthy, and what have you, and you might get a job offer, but if you never even go to the job interview, if they call you and you still don't go, you're not going to get it.

But that's a very superficial level of analysis obviously because as with everything as I've just said there's more than meets the eye to this phenomenon. Yes, technically you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. But the salient point to be made here, the absolutely key point is that every shot you take, no matter how small or big, costs energy.

And as I had discussed in a previous video, energy conservation, be it physical, mental, is the hallmark of all organisms existence because energy is calories. Energy is basically your ability to maintain life. The problem with not taking this into account is that there are severely damaging factors and things that happen when you expend energy and it doesn't work out.

So I'll give you a very simple example for my own life. Not a huge example, but it brings home the point. So ever since the great pestilence, I kind of had fallen off the bandwagon when it comes to the gym.

And as I had explained in previous videos, I used to go to the gym very frequently back in the day when I was much younger. But it was basically a vanity project. And even prior to co it was difficult because I had given up on the vanity project motivation.

And I had tried to convince myself that I was doing it for health reasons. But as most of you can recognize internally and externally if you look at the world, vanity is a much greater motivator. But with the great pestilence, the gym was open one week and then closed the next week and eventually I just fell off the bandwagon.

It didn't work out. Over the past year, I've tried to get back into it. But I've had numerous obstacles, usually involving me falling ill for an extended period of time and too ill to really train or do anything.

So I might get a cold or the flu. Most recently, I had some stomach virus that lasted almost a month. And on top of all of that, I had a prolonged family emergency and this sort of thing.

So, what happens then is you make the effort, you get back into it for a month or two, and then you have to take another break, a fairly extensive break, and your progress is set back again and again and again. Now, this is, as I already said, a very small example, but it goes to show what happens when you're investing energy in something and you have to start it over or it doesn't lead anywhere. That's the problem.

When you're taking all these shots, you have to expend energy and if it leads nowhere or if you have to start again repeatedly, you're going to naturally lose motivation to do things. That's just how human existence is. And this ties into a very important feature of human existence that I've talked about on a number of occasions.

One that is super important that we have to acknowledge. And that is the powerful and depressing feature of human existence called the Matthew effect or the Matthew principle. Right?

The idea basically being in case you're new here or have never heard it before that to those who have all shall be given. To those who have not all shall be taken. It's called the Matthew principle because it comes from the New Testament from the so-called apostle allegedly Matthew who wrote one of the books of the New Testament.

Statistically, after repeated successes, you're more likely to have continued success in the future because success begets success. One success leads to another and so it goes and so it goes. Conversely, the counterpart failure tends to lead to multiple failures and very little success because you fail once, you're discouraged, you try again, you fail again, you fail again, and eventually the energy conservation principle kicks in because that's the foundation of all of it.

Even though it might manifest as a sort of depression or something else concerning your psychology or your mentality, that energy conservation principle kicks in and you don't want to try anymore. because you've already tried five or six times and it led nowhere. You were not able to achieve anything.

And that's the problem. And that's really the dividing line here, gentlemen. With the Matthew principle and its consequence, the Matthew effect, you're really caught between a rock and a hard place.

Now it is true in many cases life is much more of a mixed bag in terms of you have some successes you have some failures but there are domains in life in which all of us have failed consistently and typically those are domains whatever they might be they're going to be different dependent on the respective person but those domains where we failed repeatedly we typically don't touch upon them again we give up so for example I was not exactly a mathematical whiz is in school. I got by with a lot of effort, but it didn't come naturally to me. And so I kind of quit after university.

I had to take a stats class and some other stuff and that was it. I moved on and I haven't really done a lot of complicated mathematics since. And the same holds true for basically everyone.

Now when we extrapolate from that onto other domains of life, you know, typically ones that most people regard as important, human relationships, friendship, romantic relationships are probably the top ones, but also work and your ability to procure a job and get by in life. Well, then things become even more dicey because what happens? Well, as can be expected, if you know, say you're an inkwell, that you have the cards stacked against you because you're short, you're unattractive, you're not going to have a lot of success to begin with when it comes to romance and the opposite sex, obviously, and you're told to make an effort regardless.

So, maybe you're one of these guys. You're a sub five, you're short, whatever. You still make an effort and you fail once and twice and thrice and then four times and five times and six times and seven times.

Eventually, you're going to feel that fate is not in your favor and that you've made the effort. You put in the so-called work, but you're not going to get any ROI on your investment because frankly speaking, the gods have cursed you with inadequate appearance and you just don't have the goods to deliver. In that case, the Matthew effect kicks in and your efforts have cost you energy and it's led nowhere.

Are you going to keep on trying? Conversely, if we take Chad Thundershlong, the classic, he never had to do anything. The girls were just eyeing him at school.

Then he went to university, and he didn't have to do anything either because he was tall, 6'3, blonde, blue-eyed, with a chiseled face, and with a sporty and athletic figure. And he literally made no effort other than to converse with the females interested in him. And they just spread their legs, and they lined up for him.

That's the polar opposite obviously, but that's also the Matthew principle in operation. And as I said, most things are somewhere in between. Many cases things are a mixed bag.

But you don't need everything to be a failure in order to not want to continue trying or to give up. You just need a majority of things to be a failure. So depending on the endeavor undertaking, even if you're shooting at a 60% failure rate, that's still not great.

And depending on your innate psychology, that level of failure might be enough to serve to discourage you from continuing to try. Now, of course, your mileage is going to vary. Some people will continue with a 60% failure rate.

They'll continue with a 75% failure rate. Maybe even an 80% failure rate because it's not 100% so they think there's a chance. But most people after a certain point, at a certain percentage, are going to give up.

And that is the crux of the issue. Yes. All of your shots that you don't take will miss.

But the shots cost energy and time and investment and effort. And it's not reasonable for people to assume and to demand of you that you put massive amounts of effort into things that you've already put effort into but yielded no results. Now you could mount the argument that people who've failed repeatedly were using the wrong methodology and in some cases that's probably true.

There are instances where people are just approaching things in the wrong way and that's why their efforts don't yield any results. However, even in such cases getting them to try again might be difficult because the Matthew effect and really what I'm trying to communicate here is that there's a lot of survivorship bias when it comes to these things. And it is possible to not engage in pure self- extrapolation.

It is possible to conceive at least intellectually if nothing else of a world and of an existence that's not yours where the challenges faced by an individual in that existence are different from your own. Because here's the thing, you don't need to have exactly the same problems or difficulties to conceptualize the idea that something is going to be difficult for someone. So for example, I have a friend who's dyslexic.

I'm not dyslexic myself, but I can imagine at least intellectually how difficult that is. And other people although they never do it can imagine how difficult it is for me with say sleep because most people just shut their eyes and they sleep eight hours and they feel fine. That never happens to me.

So this is the fundamental problem. It's always this return to self- extrapolation. We can have more understanding and compassion for human beings if we make an effort to think for a second and realize that there are costs to engaging in things.

There are cost to taking shots and we can understand that whilst the struggle of one individual might not be our own. It is nonetheless a struggle. I've talked about this many times.

I have no problem with alcoholism. I never drink period ever alcohol. I'm just not interested in alcohol and never have been.

But other people struggle mightily with the bottle. And it's always a temptation. Likewise for me, food is a big temptation.

Other people have no interest in food. They barely eat. Is it possible for one individual then to understand the other person's problem?

Of course it is. But it takes effort. Now you can't do one to one.

But you can acknowledge that there are obstacles out there that might not be your own. And that those obstacles that other people experience and have are just as valid as the ones that you experience and have. That's what I'm trying to communicate here.

Yes, you miss all the shots you don't take, but the shots cost a hell of a lot. And if you've taken 20 of them, you're just not going to be motivated to do it anymore. And that holds true of every person.

The people who are preaching from their high horse about effort and trying constantly and not giving up. These are the people in the world that did not fail sufficiently such that they would have given up. They had enough success, probably a lot to be fair, such that they think that that's what you need to do all the time, because for them it usually worked out.

And they cannot conceive of the possibility of something not working out for somebody else because all they can do is extrapolate from their own survivorship bias onto other people, which is a categorical error. A human one to be sure, but a categorical intellectual error. And if we want to be better human beings, we should strive to avoid that as much as possible.

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