188 - Roads Untraveled

Regret is a (de)motivational force that often dominates human hindsight, and the "regret of inaction" has often been regarded by philosophers as being the most potent among the various forms of this emotion.

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable." -Sydney J. Harris

Indeed, because we can learn from those mistakes we've made that become tempered as the possibility of making them again is removed, but the road not traveled remains untouched. Unfortunately, many bad actors also exploit such mechanisms of regret, including the infamous "Fear of Missing Out" (FOMO), a very shallow but still potentially potent weaponized version of it.

There is also the incoming "road less traveled", where rare opportunities may present themselves, but only when the gates remain open. In any complex system, humans within society included, these metaphorical roads are part of a vast and only partially explored network, with incoming and outgoing travelers, moving at variable speeds. Some have destinations, while others merely seek experiences without any long-term or consistent concept in mind.

While a traveler may struggle to survive in the absence of motivation, such as moving through zero-feedback environments and systems for extended periods, the demotivational value of roads not traveled poses a far greater hazard, as it offers a permanent negative rather than a zero value.

Even in the morbid contemplation of humanity's current unwavering pursuit of its own extinction, I can say that looking back on my own life I have avoided the "regret of inaction". Whenever I encountered the road for solving a hard problem worth the investment of my time I took that road, discovering new and potent solutions in a variety of domains. Whenever I regretted an action taken then I learned from it and avoided repeating it. Even having walked so far my burden remains light.

In the writing of this thought something else struck me as well. Some professions are dominated by the "regret of inaction", particularly those that routinely make the worst decisions and rely the most heavily on cognitive biases. They are faced with choice overload, far too many roads to travel, and over time bad actors learn how to game that problem, causing the choices to become considerably worse than random.

This is another hyper-complexity problem, as those with more resources, visibility, scale, and prior complexity must confront more roads, and consequently regret more inaction. Narrow AI like LLMs and "agent-based" systems could automate some such systems, making them even more trivial for bad actors to rig them for the worst possible outcomes. To overcome those bad actors requires overcoming the core problem that they exploit, hyper-complexity, and for that scalable human-like intelligence is required.

To deliver that scalable human-like intelligence one road untraveled must be chosen by someone with the necessary resources, an investor demonstrating antifragile competence.