The Southern red oak tree (Q. falcata) grows at a rate something like 1.25 feet every year, so in 12,000 years, I should have a tree over 12,000 feet tall, right?
Making a 2 percent return on investment which you expect to pay off after 12 thousand years is like planting a tree and expecting it to grow to 12,000 feet, or starting with two rabbits and expecting them to cover the entire world in a dozen generations.
Making a 2 percent return on investment which you expect to pay off after 12 thousand years is like planting a tree and expecting it to grow to 12,000 feet,
I don’t think this is a fair analogy. Robin explicitly assumed a 1/1000 chance of success. So he clearly didn’t expect that his investment would pay off after 12k years.
The point isn’t that there is a small random percentage chance of failure/success. Your tree doesn’t have 1/1000 chance of growing to 12,000 feet, there are structural problems with the way the world works that make it functionally impossible. There are trees near ten thousand years old, none of which have grown anywhere near that tall, because the number we assign to “growth rate” is actually one of the very very many variables that affect which trees can exist and how they do so. Using a self-multiplying “Growth-rate” number to try to figure out how your investment fund is going to do in 12k years is ignoring just as many variables.
The Southern red oak tree (Q. falcata) grows at a rate something like 1.25 feet every year, so in 12,000 years, I should have a tree over 12,000 feet tall, right?
Making a 2 percent return on investment which you expect to pay off after 12 thousand years is like planting a tree and expecting it to grow to 12,000 feet, or starting with two rabbits and expecting them to cover the entire world in a dozen generations.
The oldest bank in the world has existed a paltry few centuries
I don’t think this is a fair analogy. Robin explicitly assumed a 1/1000 chance of success. So he clearly didn’t expect that his investment would pay off after 12k years.
Is planting a thousand trees and expecting one of them to grow to 12,000 feet a better analogy?
The point isn’t that there is a small random percentage chance of failure/success. Your tree doesn’t have 1/1000 chance of growing to 12,000 feet, there are structural problems with the way the world works that make it functionally impossible. There are trees near ten thousand years old, none of which have grown anywhere near that tall, because the number we assign to “growth rate” is actually one of the very very many variables that affect which trees can exist and how they do so. Using a self-multiplying “Growth-rate” number to try to figure out how your investment fund is going to do in 12k years is ignoring just as many variables.