#104: The Life of Ed Thorp, Obscurely Fantastic Children's Books, You Have 12 Shots in Life

Hi All!

We are pleased to welcome you to this week's edition of Undiscovered, a newsletter with exclusive resources and insights expanding on the material found on our main site - becketu.com.

This week, we will take a look at how Ed Thorp lives life, how plot surfaces through rules in worldbuilding, how to maximize your 'shots' in life, and more.

Let's dive in:

A Life Worth Emulating

I've always been curious and intrigued by the life of Ed Thorp. He's a legendary polymath and true Renaissance man, excelling as a mathematics professor, author, hedge fund manager, and blackjack researcher. David Senra of the Founders podcast has read over 400 biographies of the world's greatest historical entrepreneurs and said Thorp is his personal blueprint for how to live life. There's also an incredible podcast Thorp recorded with Tim Ferriss a while back.

What made me revisit Thorp's life, however, was a recent four-paragraph tweet from Jeremy Giffon exploring who Thorp was and what his potential legacy will be. Giffon gives a brief overview of Thorp's professional career, and after describes him with the following:

I believe Thorp will be remembered in the pantheon of world greats. Future entrepreneurs will pay attention not only to the fame and fortune their idols amassed during their life, but how they lived the rest of their life. Thorp had a very successful marriage, and just like Giffon describes, "What's most striking is his ability to just have enough and walk away."

Knowing what's enough. Having a loving family. Not desiring to be a name every single person knows, but those that do have the utmost respect for it.

That, is a life worth emulating.

Please Be Original

​Anu Atluru, one of the best writers and thinkers alive, nearly always has the right take when it comes to thinking about pop tech culture. In response to the viral and mega-successful Claude, "Keep Thinking" pop-up in West Village, there sprang a myriad of copycats. I love what she says about other brands who simply try to copy:

You must always strive to be original, or at least, you can't do the exact same thing another brand did and expect the same results. Claude's campaign is ultimately going to be a huge success, and they are drawing the exact type of people to their tool by framing it as the 'anti slop' standard.

An Obscure, Fantastic List of Children's Books

If you have been up to date with the latest Undiscovered editions, you'll know I have found myself being drawn to reading more children's books. The best of these stories hold deep truths, need to immediately grab and hold the attention of someone with limited amounts to give, and also contain beautiful images.

I am extremely happy to have come across this amazing thread of @owenbroadcast that goes through their 'second annual children's book recommendation thread'. I knew this would be a thread I could trust as soon as I saw the first few recommendations: The Story of the Root Children, Cathedral (also covered in a previous edition of Undiscovered), and The Duchess Bakes a Cake.

The majority of the titles on this list are obscure, and that's exactly what makes them so intriguing to me. Cyclops themself is a children's book author, with all four of their books available here.

Establishing Plot in Fantasy, Sci-Fi, or Any Story

Love this insight from Possum Reviews on how to establish plot if you've done lots of worldbuilding for a story you're creating. Possum says:

In Dune, Spice is the most important resource in the universe. This begets a sequence of natural follow-up questions:

• Why is it to so valuable? ➡️ Because it's rare, and can only be found on one planet
• Why can it only be found on this one planet? ➡️ Because it's the product of a lifeform that's native to it: the sandworms
• Why can't they just cultivate the sandworms on other planets? ➡️ Because they're really big and dangerous, can only survive on that planet, and the spice is created when their secretions interact with the local environment.

The story is then centered around people fighting over this planet, but how do worms come into the plot?

• A population of primitive natives worship the worms as gods, and one of the factions fighting over control of the planet needs these people to help them take control.
• Protagonist needs to convince these people to help them, but how? He uses the universe's magic system to convince them he's a messiah figure and becomes their leader.

The plot becomes:

• this individual attempting to win over the natives so he can take complete control over it, and
• he needs to control it because it's the only source of the most valuable resource in the universe, and to do that...
• he needs to convince them he's their messiah figure and conquer the giant worms they worship.

From reading this, you may assume this is simply the classic "MacGuffin" element of a story, but Possum expands on this by saying 'a MacGuffin is a thing that motivates conflict, but is ultimately unimportant to the themes of the story and can easily be swapped out for something else and not affect the story (like replacing diamonds with gold in a heist movie)...If you were to swap out the Spice in Dune for anything that's just generically valuable like gold or diamonds, the story wouldn't make any sense at all. The Spice is so interwoven with the plot and themes that it can't be interchanged, and is therefore not a MacGuffin."

You Have 12 Shots in Life

Wonderful X Article written by jessy (@13yearoldvc), called "You have 12 shots in life". This comes from the idea that if you're a young, healthy adult, you probably have about 50 working years ahead of you. If you commit 2-10 years per project, that's 5-25 shots at creating something great (varying by industry and life stage). Jessy takes the average: 4 years per shot, around 12 shots total, equaling 12 shots in life. 'Shots' can be joining a startup, starting a company, working on a major project, or changing careers entirely.

Jessy continues by saying that not all shots are created equal, and success in creating something great requires unity between different deterministic forces. These forces, are 天地人.

天 (heaven): mastering timing
地 (earth): being in the right environment
​人 (person): building with people

Jessy expands on each, with this order being intentional in ranked importance. In order to properly evaluate your shots in life, you have to be able to look at them with the following perspective:

Good Shots:

• Feel intuitively right internally (your gut says yes)
• Have external momentum and traction
• Offer asymmetric upside (capped downside, unlimited upside)
• Position you for better future shots regardless of outcome

Bad Shots:

• Feel forced or desperate (you're just optimizing for motion)
• Lack external traction despite your efforts
• Have high downside with limited learning potential
• Don't expand your capabilities or relationships

Jessy concludes by saying "each shot should expand your capabilities, compound your relationships, create lasting artifacts and position you for better future shots. Your shots should get bigger as you get better. They're all part of the same game - creating beautiful, impactful work that makes you feel like you've truly lived."

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Always wishing you the best,

J.B.