‘On the Edge’ Puts Its Bets in the Wrong Places

On the edge: the art of risking everything

"From the New York Times bestselling author of The Signal and the Noise, the definitive guide to our era of risk-and the players raising the stakes In the bestselling The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver showed how forecasting would define the age of Big Data. Now, in this timely and riveting new book, Silver investigates "The River," or those whose mastery of risk allows them to shape-and dominate-so much of modern life. These professional risk takers-poker players and hedge fund managers, crypto true-believers and blue-chip art collectors-can teach us much about navigating the uncertainty of the 21st century. By embedding within the worlds of Doyle Brunson, Peter Thiel, Sam Bankman-Fried, Sam Altman, and many others, Silver offers insight into a range of issues that affect us all, from the frontiers of finance to the future of AI. The River has increasing amounts of wealth and power in our society, and understanding their mindset-including the flaws in their thinking-is key to understanding what drives technology and the global economy today. There are certain commonalities in this otherwise diverse group: high tolerance for risk; appreciation of uncertainty; affinity for numbers; skill at de-coupling; self-reliance and a distrust of the conventional wisdom. For the River, complexity is baked in, and the work is how to navigate it, without going beyond the pale. Taking us behind-the-scenes from casinos to venture capital firms to the FTX inner sanctum to meetings of the effective altruism movement, On the Edge is a deeply-reported, all-access journey into a hidden world of powerbrokers and risk takers"--

The Bookmaker | The Point Magazine

In the lead-up to the 2008 election, Nate Silver revolutionized the way we talk about politics, bringing cold, hard, numerical facts to a world that had been dominated by the gut feelings of reporters and opinion columnists.

The Bookmaker | The Point Magazine

In the lead-up to the 2008 election, Nate Silver revolutionized the way we talk about politics, bringing cold, hard, numerical facts to a world that had been dominated by the gut feelings of reporters and opinion columnists.

Mark Zuckerberg Sure Sounds Eager to Get Young People Hooked on Online Gambling

The Meta CEO is developing a social network betting market app—and wants help from Polymarket and Kalshi.

Adversarial Collaboration: An EDGE Lecture by Daniel Kahneman | Edge.org

[EDITOR'S NOTE: In marking this year's 25th anniversary of Edge, we are presenting original lectures from eminent scientists and other thinkers in th­e empirical world who are changing the way we think about science and our place­­ in the world.]

How Everything Became Gambling

It’s not just DraftKings and Polymarket — the logic of gambling undergirds everything coming out of Silicon Valley.

Edge.org

"Nothing In Life Is As Important As You Think It Is, While You Are Thinking About It"

You don't have to gamble for gambling to ruin your life

How gambling is eroding empathy, destroying relationships, and changing our culture — even for people who never bet.

#760: Gambling the future into existence

Plus: Cosmo for conservatives, AI;DR and being "agentic"

We Haven’t Seen the Worst of What Gambling and Prediction Markets Will Do to America

I don’t think people have thought hard enough about how bad this could get.

The signal and the noise: why so many predictions fail - but some don't

"Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise is The Soul of …

ADDICTION BY DESIGN: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas – Natasha Dow Schüll

Slot machines, revamped by evermore compelling digital and video technology, have unseated traditional casino games as the gambling industry’s revenue mainstay. Drawing on fifteen years of field research in Las Vegas, anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll explores the dark side of machine gambling—a solitary, rapid, continuous form of play that has less to do with the competitive thrill of winning than with the pull of “the machine zone,” as gamblers call the trancelike state they enter.

Double or Nothing!

Climb from Lv 1 Street Crook to Lv 99 Gambling CEO and gamble all over the place!

The Gambler Who Cracked the Horse-Racing Code

Bill Benter did the impossible: He wrote an algorithm that couldn’t lose at the track. Close to a billion dollars later, he tells his story for the first time.

In 2025, venture capital can’t pretend everything is fine any more

Venture capital is screwed. A bubble in AI is their last hope, and they’re betting everything on Sam Altman. It’s heartwarming. Today, we have the Pitchbook-NVCA Venture Monitor for Q1 2025. This i…