Luck is Symmetric
Preparing for AI takeoff with the boy, the horse, and Elvis.
There’s a Daoist story about a boy who falls off a horse and breaks his leg. What bad luck, the villagers say. Then a war breaks out, and every able-bodied young man is drafted, except the boy with the broken leg. What good luck, the villagers say.
Maybe the war ends quickly, and the returning soldiers are awarded with honor, while the boy is left with a limp and no prospects. Maybe it drags on, and the boy becomes the one to lead his village. But the story never ends, because luck never really settles.
Elvis Presley rose from a shotgun home in Mississippi to stratospheric fame. A king by twenty-one, a cautionary tale by forty-two. Almost fifty years later, Graceland is still there, preserved like a monument for 600,000 visitors every year. But he isn’t.
What luck, the villagers said.
What tragedy, they said later.
Was he lucky? To be born with talent, in the right place, at the right time? Or unlucky, to be consumed by the machine of his own success? Yes and yes.
Elvis died with a mansion, a fleet of cars so numerous it was turned into a museum, and a legacy so vast it would outlive him into the next century. None of it bought more time. Strip away the jumpsuits and private jets, and the story isn’t just his. It’s the story of kings and tycoons, of civilizations that mistook accumulation for permanence.
History is riddled with people who mistake having more for lasting longer.
The pyramids stand, but their builders are dust.
The S&P climbs, but no one outruns the clock.
If success is measured by accumulation, what does it all add up to?
Companies, leaders, the fate of empires. They rise not just because they’re good, but because they match their moment. Wartime leaders thrive in chaos. Peacetime leaders in optimization. The mistake is thinking either strategy guarantees lastingness.
How should a retail investor prepare for AGI?
Some argue a fast AI takeoff will be deflationary: lower costs, greater efficiency, and everything gets faster and cheaper.
Others say it will be inflationary: accelerated obsolescence, labor market churn, and a higher discount rate for the future.
What about the dignity of work?
Whichever way the pendulum swings, what matters isn’t whether AI is “good” or “bad” luck, but how well we recognize, re-chart course, and navigate it. People like to tally luck, or money, or success as if they add up to something stable. But luck isn’t a balance sheet. It’s a tide, pulling in fortune and misfortune in equal measure. The real question is whether we recognize which way it’s moving.
In 1950s postwar America, Elvis rode the wave of a changing world and became king.
Then the tide shifted, and he was no longer there.
If luck is adaptation, then so is survival. And if survival is adaptation, then so is reinvention. The boy with the broken leg didn’t know what comes next. Neither did Elvis. And neither do we. But the story never ends, because luck never really settles.
And that means there’s always time to begin again.