#writing Is our quest for more leaving us with less? My latest piece explores how our modern abundance—from sports gambling to information overload—creates a paradox of unhappiness amid plenty. Starting with the explosion of legalized sports betting, I examine how our restless pursuit of fulfillment connects to financial markets, biblical wisdom, and what Taleb calls "The Expert Problem." Discover why more information often makes us more confident but not more correct, and why sometimes the hardest thing to do is nothing at all. --- **February 24, 2025** Sports gambling has been widely legalized after 2018, and it's amazing how quickly it has taken off. Well, I guess it's not that surprising—money and hope sell. It reminds me of this quote about Emperor Commodus from Senator Gracchus in the Gladiator: >I think he knows what Rome is. Rome is the mob. Conjure magic for them and they'll be distracted. Take away their freedom and still they'll roar. The beating heart of Rome is not the marble of the senate, it's the sand of the coliseum. He'll bring them death - and they will love him for it. Don't get me wrong, I'm a proponent of well-informed speculation and gambling; but not the overly commercialized encouragement of uninformed risk-taking that we have now. Promotional "giveaways," celebrity picks, and "boosted" odds are all designed to prey on the average person's vulnerability by offering them false hope and a path to quick riches without much work. Put differently, it's a stupid tax. If you are not willing to put in the work to figure out if the odds on the parlay are fair, then you are giving away [[edge]]. You might say it's entertainment, but it's highly addictive and overpriced. Consider how companies can "give away" thousands of dollars in free bets while also boasting healthy profit margins. ## From Gambling to the Human Condition But this isn't a post about sports betting; for that, you should look into [Andrew Mack]( https://x.com/Gingfacekillah) to see just one example of who is on the other side of all of your bets; and then take a moment to think about your strategy for gambling and life in general. This whole sports betting phenomenon has been gnawing at me for some time because I am well-versed in it, a huge sports fan, and am honestly tired of all the fantasy football group texts about stupid ideas for weekend parlays. It reminds me of what Tocqueville described when he came to America: >One is at first astonished to contemplate the singular agitation displayed by so many happy men in the very midst of their abundance. ## The Paradox of Human Happiness Pascal said we all had a God-shaped hole in our hearts which cannot be satisfied by anything other than God. The desire for happiness is universal, but the methods we each employ to achieve it are different. Unfortunately, most of us seem to never reach or only temporarily take hold of the goal for which we all endeavor. It's like we are putting marbles into a container hoping to fill it up, yet no matter how many marbles we put in, there is always some empty space. So we go on looking for more in a constant state of restlessness. This restlessness is not all bad; it drove us to discover electricity, harness the power of the atom, send people to the moon, write our best novels, create our best works of art, invent artificial intelligence, and raise living standards across the world. But it apparently leaves us [unfulfilled and miserable](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/03/21/world-happiness-report-young-people-u-s/73051010007/). ## "Less is More": A Counterintuitive Principle "Less is More" is a well-known principle based on the idea of emphasizing clarity, simplicity, efficiency, and the importance of the essentials. Embracing it in daily life can lead to reduced stress and anxiety, increased mindfulness, increased cognitive functioning, and better overall wellbeing. Many religious teachings align with this principle, encouraging trust in God's provision in order to give more space for love and forgiveness, which is aided by a reduced focus on materialism. In today's world, where technological advances have yielded more abundance than we have ever had in the history of humankind, it is strange to see so much unhappiness and unfulfillment despite the abundance of the things we desire. ## The Wisdom of Job: Control and Surrender The story of Job offers a unique perspective on this paradox. Job was a very successful man who fell on hard times in a horrific string of calamities that saw him lose not only his fortune but most of his family. His friends came to comfort him by advising him to repent for his wrongdoing because ***he*** must have done something wrong to merit his misfortune. Despite their good-natured intentions, their counsel left no space for anyone other than Job to determine his circumstances, which only produced more despair. Satan had asked God for permission to test Job, and God let it happen. Satan, ever the cynic, believed that Job would turn from God if his circumstances changed. The logic of Job's friends mirrored Satan's reasoning: we are in control of our lives, and if we are in control, then that means we must do something; in other words, we have a price. If we have a price, that means we can be bought as slaves. **By trying to control our circumstances, all we have done is choose one slave master over another.** ## The Paradox of Abundance and Information This cynical logic drives much of society and equally contributes to our abundance and misery because more of anything alone is not necessarily a good thing. Supply-side economics argues that economic growth is best achieved through more production, which will foster job creation, investment, and productivity. However, second-order effects can dampen this impact by decreasing the quality of production due to increased competition and lower profit margins. Cynical reasoning is linear, which is why it doesn't capture these second-order effects. Just like we all seek happiness, we also seek wisdom, but wisdom cannot be gained by just acquiring more information. Proverbs 8 describes a sequence to gaining wisdom: knowledge comes from information and is the raw material for [[learning]], but wisdom also requires discernment and prudence. The more we have, the more discernment and prudence is required. >A large part of wisdom is knowing what to ignore. A large part of expertise is knowing where to place your attention. >[*Share Parrish*](https://fs.blog/evaluating-information/) ## Less Information, More Stability? There is also an example of the benefits of less information we can see in the markets. In a [[Reflexivity|reflexive]] system where independent agents make decisions based on information input into the system, the population standard deviation is likely to depend on the amount of information provided. Here's why: - **Smaller Input of Information:** With limited information, agents might rely on simpler heuristics or default behaviors, potentially leading to more uniform decisions and thus a smaller standard deviation in their responses. - **Greater Input of Information:** More information can introduce complexity and variability in decision-making as agents interpret and act on the input differently. This can lead to a wider range of responses, increasing the standard deviation. Thus, the sample with greater information input is likely to exhibit a larger population standard deviation due to increased heterogeneity in agent responses. ## Information Overload in Financial Markets We see this in the alternative asset marketplace that has grown significantly due to the superior risk-adjusted returns it has delivered recently. We have questioned whether these returns are really a characteristic of the investment or just [[CHG Issue 148 Unpacking Investment Vehicles|a feature of the packaging they have come in]]. For example, why would two similar mid-cap companies, one listed and one owned by private equity, trade at wildly different volatilities? We have argued that [[Liquidity|volatility is the price of liquidity]] and that the increased information that comes with more liquid instruments will inherently increase the volatility of private assets if they are put in more liquid structures. Unfortunately, more information doesn't only increase the volatility, but it also increases our confidence at exactly the wrong time. The [[Availability Bias]] is our tendency to rely heavily on easily available information when making decisions, and the more readily available information there is, the more easily we will come to highly confident judgments. The world-class psychologist Paul Slovic conducted a well-known [study](https://ma.tt/2017/11/adam-robinson-on-understanding/) of horse bettors and gave them varying amounts of information and measured the accuracy of their bets. The results of this study showed that the increase in information increased their confidence but not their results. ## The Expert Problem and Our Decision-Making When we are overwhelmed by too much information, we tend to turn to experts to help us discern what to believe; however, we are poor judges of expertise, especially in highly uncertain domains like life and the markets. We are poor judges partly because when we are trying to discern who is an expert, we often [answer an easier question](https://www.experimental-history.com/p/how-to-feel-bad-and-be-wrong). For example, we easily conclude a charismatic and engaging guest on CNBC is a market expert without considering their actual investment experience or track record. This leads to what Taleb calls the [[Expert Problem]], which results when these experts fail to accurately judge the limit to their own so-called expertise. ## Bringing It All Together We could keep pulling on this thread, but I think we've clearly seen how a simple, seemingly virtuous desire, or harmless weekend parlay, when multiplied across society, can manifest system-wide unhappiness. There is no single solution to the problems created by this, but we can better equip ourselves to make decisions if we spend some time thinking about these things instead of jumping to conclusions. While it's easy to see how [[Simple versus Simplistic|simplicity]] and functionality are desirable, there are tradeoffs. We can simplify a complex process to increase functionality, but the [[Complexity]] doesn't go away; it is merely transformed and we must not forget that lest we risk being blindsided in the future. I always struggle to wrap up these letters because I feel like I have to offer some call to action, or a prescription, or forecast. It's hard to resist these natural urges, but to do so now would basically go against all that we've just explored. One of the hardest things we are called to do is to do nothing and trust that if we have a good process, the ability to [[Fielding Outcomes|field outcomes]] appropriately, and adjust accordingly things will work out. Even harder is to put our own self-interest second to others and risk sacrificing everything we may have achieved or acquired. But that is exactly what Jesus Christ did, and that has given hope and happiness to billions of people throughout history. Job resisted the advice of his friends and put his confidence in God and his own blamelessness and when the time came, he owned up to his own shortcomings and eventually things worked out. No one wants to go through what he did, but we can all learn from how he handled himself.