Borel-Cantelli and Annihilation Events

(In this premium subscriber post, I talk about an obscure math theorem and why it holds the key to our survival as a species. I don’t want to give too much away, but there will be talk of zombie corporations, Atari games, Hot Pockets, cold porridge, high-stakes dice games, barn-building, and plutonium-powered spacecraft.)

“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”

You might recognize this quote from “Fight Club” (both book and movie). It’s said by The Narrator, whose job is to calculate whether it’s cheaper to pay off the victims of a company’s flawed product, or fix the flaw. You may have also seen that quote used as the slogan for popular investing news site ZeroHedge. Investing is gambling, and no matter how carefully you do it, there’s always the risk of gambler’s ruin. It’s impossible to hedge against all of them, all of the time. On a long enough timeline, you will lose the farm.