Taking Chances

Earlier this year I went to Uzbekistan. One thing I noticed was the amount of kids. We stayed close to the central park, which was full of families and kids every evening. It is not surprising given the population of Uzbekistan has doubled over the last 30 years, but it creates a very different vibe, especially compared to Germany, where the population pyramid is slowly inverting.

During my trip I read The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk¹. One thing that I kept thinking about, was how the Russian and British players of the game, would set out to cross unknown terrains and travel to almost mythical cities based on a mix of hearsay, inaccurate maps and decades old information. They would depend completely on the kindness of strangers, their ability to make friends and to solve problems as they arose. You couldn't exactly carry months worth of water or look up the latest weather forecasts.

In Tashkent we had dinner with a friend of an acquaintance. During our dinner the topic of kids came up since, as our new friend would soon welcome his fifth child. Five kids is almost unheard of in the West! For him, having more kids was just good. He couldn't really describe why, but he said that after he had his first kid he felt richer and after the second even more richer. Any worries he might have had about how to afford it and so on he brushed aside.

I found it very refreshing and such a huge contrast to how it is in the west. As the world has gotten safer (even if it sometimes doesn't feel like it) we have gotten even more risk averse. The stakes of most our choices have never been lower. At the same time, they feel higher since it is so easy to imagine different futures and picking one closes the door for many others.

What I don't understand is that unimportant decisions are analyzed to death. It sometimes feels like the risk of having a bad or even just an average meal is too big. It is so easy to check Google maps for reviews instead of just picking a place that happens to be nearby and looks okay. When did this transition happen? Did we change or is it just that this information used to be much harder to find?

My experience is that reviews are almost turning into an anti-signal. If a place has many reviews and good ratings it is probably good, but probably also boring. That's why I would watch a 6.5 movie with a barbell distribution of reviews, but probably wouldn't watch a 6.5 normally distributed movie. Ideally, I wouldn't necessarily know.

What do we lose when we stop taking these small chances, not to say the big ones? Our Uzbek friend assumes things will work out. Our ancestors, almost no matter where you're from would set out into the unknown. To be fair, a lot of the Great Game players died young, but even if their lives were short that were also wide.

Our dinner in Tashkent was at a restaurant that didn't show up on neither Yandex or Google Maps. It had live music, a pleasant vibe and the food was delicious.