I’m surprised, as a poker player, you didn’t include the example that it’s pretty well known that the most important skill in poker is game selection. Playing well, knowing the odds, and reading your opponents are important, but your win rate is almost completely determined by whether you’re playing in soft games, and leaving when the lineup is tough.
Separately, I think you should introduce into this framework the idea of comparative advantage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage). In most pursuits, it matters not just how good your product is, but also how much better YOUR product is than the competition. Absolute goodness is rarely enough, in the world of plenty we live in. This means that even if many people prefer a thai-style omlette, the fact that it’s much less demanding to produce than a french omlette means it’s not as profitable/useful to be good at it.
Ah, that’s a really great point about game selection and it totally escaped me! Thanks for mentioning it. Taking it further, nowadays people are moving away from holdem and towards games like PLO and Short Deck because holdem has gotten too competitive.
I agree about comparative advantage, but I’m not sure that it’d be going down that path. There’s a lot that can be said about what makes a dish good/better. My sense is that it’s better to restrict the scope of the post to the idea that it’s often worth looking for a better dish than how to go about doing so.
I’m surprised, as a poker player, you didn’t include the example that it’s pretty well known that the most important skill in poker is game selection. Playing well, knowing the odds, and reading your opponents are important, but your win rate is almost completely determined by whether you’re playing in soft games, and leaving when the lineup is tough.
Separately, I think you should introduce into this framework the idea of comparative advantage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage). In most pursuits, it matters not just how good your product is, but also how much better YOUR product is than the competition. Absolute goodness is rarely enough, in the world of plenty we live in. This means that even if many people prefer a thai-style omlette, the fact that it’s much less demanding to produce than a french omlette means it’s not as profitable/useful to be good at it.
Ah, that’s a really great point about game selection and it totally escaped me! Thanks for mentioning it. Taking it further, nowadays people are moving away from holdem and towards games like PLO and Short Deck because holdem has gotten too competitive.
I agree about comparative advantage, but I’m not sure that it’d be going down that path. There’s a lot that can be said about what makes a dish good/better. My sense is that it’s better to restrict the scope of the post to the idea that it’s often worth looking for a better dish than how to go about doing so.