Driving home from improv the other night I was struck by colliding thoughts. I made a joke to some of the newer people as we were leaving that we aren’t really that good. That we’re only on level 2 which is Intermediate Beginners which is followed by Advanced Beginners and finally I Can’t Believe You’re Still a Fucking Beginner. In my headed I added one more level, Back to Basics.
Perpetual Beginners wouldn’t be a bad team name as it is, but at the time I was having these thoughts I was listening to Fooled by Randomness a book somewhat about investing, and I had gotten to a chapter talking about options blindness.
There is a meme online called the “Midtwit” where a dumb person on the left on the meme and a smart person on the right reach the same conclusion while the person in the middle shouts out what we call common sense. This is very evident in both improv and investing.
The common sense in options trading is if 90% of options expire worthless then it is good to sell the option instead of buying them, but no one ever asks what happens in those 10% of the times when it doesn’t. For someone selling the options the answer is catastrophic failure, and for the person buying them great reward.
Buying out of the money options is therefore mocked by the prevailing wisdom as a bad strategy, but if you lose $1 nine times and make $20 on that tenth time then you’ve made a good profit.
The same goes for improv. There are all sorts of thoughts and techniques that can get in the way, but we have to explore that middle ground before reaching the end so that we understand the why of them. Why they get in the way. It is then that we can return to a strategy of simply yes, and whatever your scene partner says.
David Huzzard Writes 