I state here: gambling is not a flaw in human nature, but one of our most significant traits, the engine driving our evolution, economy, and the development of civilization.
From the structure of the brain to the birth of markets, from ancient explorations to modern technology, the logic of risk and return profoundly influences civilization and humanity, far beyond what we dare to admit.
Betting is truth.
Life is like tossing tokens.
Imagine two tribes in early human civilization, both facing the same mathematical reality of survival.
Tribe A chooses safety; they live near rivers, eat familiar foods, and avoid unknown risks. Their survival strategies are as follows:
Probability of maintaining current caloric intake: 85%.
Probability of slight improvement: 15%.
Daily expected survival rate: 0.97.
Tribe B chooses to take risks; they explore new territories, try unfamiliar fruits, and traverse dangerous terrains. Their strategies are as follows:
Probability of failure (hunger, poisoning, death): 60%.
Probability of slight harvest: 35%.
Probability of major discovery (new hunting grounds, fertile valleys): 5%.
Daily expected survival rate: 0.89.
The conservative strategy of tribe A seems superior: higher daily survival probabilities, lower volatility, predictable outcomes, but compound interest is brutal.
After 1,000 days:
Survival probability of tribe A: 0.97 to the power of 1,000 ≒ 0.0000061%.
Survival probability of tribe B: (0.89 to the power of 1,000) × P (major discovery) = the difference in outcomes is huge.
Conservative tribes are doomed to extinction due to slow decline.
Risk-taking tribes face bimodal outcomes: most attempts will perish, but a small part not only survives but also thrives, ultimately dominating.
The jackpot paradox in evolution.
Under the effect of compound interest, the arithmetic mean (average expected outcome) diverges catastrophically from the geometric mean (long-term median outcome).
Conservative strategies create the illusion of safety but are destined to fail.
Gambling strategies may seem suicidal, but they are the only path to long-term success.
In life, the biggest risk is not taking any risks.
You must take risks, fail, learn, and then reap huge rewards.
Conservative strategy (tribe A):
Daily return rate: 0.97 (sustaining a 3% decline).
Geometric mean: daily -3%.
Extinction time: about 115 days (ln(0.5)/ln(0.97)).
Gambling strategies (tribe B):
Daily return rate: [−40%, +10%, +500%] with probabilities of [0.6, 0.35, 0.05] respectively.
Arithmetic mean: daily +5.5%.
Geometric mean: mostly daily -5.8%, jackpot path +∞.
95% of attempts will go extinct more quickly, but 5% will dominate.
Averages cannot be optimized.
You must strive to optimize for the possibility of extreme positive outcomes, even if it increases the chance of failure, but you must take risks, as that is the only way.
We are the descendants of the minority who won gambling and reaped the rewards of evolution. Everyone alive today carries the genetic imprint of ancestors who chose volatility. The dopamine stimulation brought by uncertain rewards is not just entertainment; it is a survival mechanism aimed at optimizing multiplicative rather than additive outcomes.
The winner-takes-all mathematics of innovation.
Small innovations can yield exponential disproportionate returns.
What happens when tribe B's ventures succeed? They discover fire, agriculture, or more advanced hunting techniques, gaining a permanent survival advantage.
The frontiers of innovation:
Two tribes: 2.1 children per family, population growth rate: about 0.5% per generation.
After innovation (tribe B begins to develop agriculture):
Tribe A: Still 2.1 children per family.
Tribe B: 2.3 children per family (10% advantage from improved nutrition).
A mere 10% reproductive advantage can trigger genetic optimization.
After n generations:
Population of tribes A and B: P₀ × (1.005)ⁿ, P₀ × (1.015)ⁿ.
Proportion of tribe B in the total population = (1.015)ⁿ / [(1.005)ⁿ + (1.015)ⁿ].
Generation 100: Tribe B makes up 67% of the population.
Generation 300: Tribe B makes up 97% of the population.
In 300 generations (about 7,500 years), a 10% reproductive advantage leads to the genes of the conservative population being almost completely replaced.
Genetic research repeatedly confirms this:
Y chromosome Adam: A male lineage expanded to account for about 60% of all men today.
Mitochondrial Eve: A female lineage became the matrilineal ancestor of all modern humans.
Lactose tolerance provided about a 2-3% survival advantage in dairy farming cultures 7,500 years ago. This slight advantage, compounded over 300 generations, grew from 0.1% to 35% in humans, increasing in frequency by 35,000%.
The super-gambling of evolution:
The cost of a 'bet' (gene mutation) is nearly zero, just a single DNA base pair.
The failure rate is about 99.99%, with most mutations being neutral or harmful.
A successful bet yields exponential compounding until dominance is achieved.
This pattern repeats at various scales:
Individuals: Those with more advanced tools can better feed their families.
Tribes: Groups with more advanced agriculture can support 100 times the population.
Species: A breakthrough (language, fire, agriculture) brings global dominance.
DNA reflects this: a little innovation can bring exponential compounding, and pioneers will reap disproportionate returns. The structure of returns tends to extreme outcomes rather than moderate ones.
We did not evolve to avoid risks but to calculate risks and bet on asymmetric upside potential.
When we start rolling dice.
The oldest written characters are about 5,000 years old. The oldest dice are even older than writing, meaning gambling predates language. We were playing games of chance before laws, money, or cities appeared. We cast sheep knuckles, drew lots, and created meaning from randomness.
In Mesopotamia, dice were spiritual tools. Ancient Chinese used randomness in the I Ching to divine fate. Romans rolled dice before political decisions. In the Mahabharata, a kingdom fell due to a single bet. Chance is not independent of society; it is the foundation of society.
Gambling became the primal form of resource allocation, the source of ritualized conflict and the means of social hierarchy division. When you don’t know what will happen, you roll the dice and agree to accept the results. It simulates risk in a controllable way; gambling is our culture.
Better gambling systems.
As human civilization continues to develop, our bets are also upgrading. We trade across oceans, yet we do not know if the ships can return; we wage wars without guarantees of victory; we build cathedrals that take 300 years to complete, yet we do not know if anyone will finish them. But we become smarter; we build tools to manage our gambling instincts and scale them.
The most trusted institutions in modern society are merely formalized gambling systems:
Modern enterprises: Diversifying investment risks.
Insurance: Born from maritime trade in Renaissance-era Europe, pooling risks.
Lotteries: Used to fund Harvard, the Great Wall, and churches.
Stock markets: Speculative machines built on beliefs about the future.
Democracy: Structured gambling about who should lead us.
Civilization rises by taming risk, riding the tiger rather than avoiding it, and sharing excess returns. When someone ventures to innovate, this innovation benefits all of humanity over time.
The social contract is a bet on each other.
Why we need gambling.
The more we try to eliminate uncertainty in life, the more people will seek it.
We engage in stable jobs, pay insurance premiums, and then log into Robinhood to bet our savings on hot stocks. Learning about cryptocurrencies, chasing jackpots.
Why? Gambling is existential.
Gambling is a practice of fate; we roll dice to feel the allure of gambling again. Games are animals' rehearsals for real life, and humans uniquely created gambling to simulate high-risk situations.
Entrepreneurship is a socially acceptable form of gambling. Startups are full of volatility; founders bet time, status, and capital. Investors seek outliers, not averages. The venture capital model is based on jackpot logic: a few successful cases can cover all costs. Proper gambling is creative; it drives exploration, innovation, and discovery, turning noise into signal.
When gambling works well, it creates rather than destroys.
Gambling is a force for good. It is the courage to face the unknown, creating order from chaos, transforming randomness into ritual.
We consume alternative risks. We watch others play. We crave bets but fear the consequences. The problem may not be that we gamble too much, but that we gamble too poorly.
The risk of super-gambling is not in tossing tokens but in tossing them aimlessly.
We should not try to eliminate gambling but restore its evolutionary advantages. Reintroducing risk as a tool for transformation. Today's children are engaged in super-gambling, in all our applications, in all the surfaces of human interaction. The only way forward is to accept this and acknowledge the importance of speculation.
A future without risk may sound like a utopia, but that is inhuman.
This article is reprinted with permission from: (Foresight News).
Original title: (Gamble/acc: How Gambling Built Civilization).
Original author: GRITCULT.
Translation: AididiaoJP, Foresight News.
'Betting is truth? The GRITCULT perspective: The biggest risk in the crypto space is not taking any risks.' This article was first published in 'Crypto City'.