You Can’t Claim to Be a Skilled Fisherman in a Pond With Little Fish
Know how to pick your ponds. The choice matters
The pond matters.
A lot.
The experience? Not quite. It depends.
If the world is filled with ponds, having the right fishing hook and skills does not matter if your pond lacks fish.
Imagine you have gone out to fish during winter. With you is someone who has been fishing all his life, ever since he knew how to grab a fishing rod.
You spend hours, in the cold, eerie lake but with no result. Only weeds.
Would you believe the person is skilled?
You might even be mad you went out fishing in the first place. These hours could have been spent in a cosy blanket. Maybe with a hot mug of coffee to bring life back to your hands.
Now your hands are lifeless.
Your feet are numb logs.
And you have no fish.
Years of experience but nothing to show for it. Since we appeal to emotion, you will always remember this day when someone remarks that they are good at fishing.
After such a bad outcome, will you believe experience matters?
The short answer is it does.
The more comprehensive answer is it depends. It’s what I have learnt from my senior colleagues.
It always depends.
But if you have experience and choose the wrong battleground, you won’t be victorious enough to have history write the books.
And history is written by the victors. The victor was the lake.
The losers were you and your experienced friend.
Because you lack experience, you might think this is the worse fishing escapade ever. For the experienced fisherman, it might be another day in November.
He has seen similar days. You haven’t.
So experience does matter.
But does it matter if you choose the wrong pond?
Let’s say it was your first time in Iceland.
I don’t speak like a resident. I know most of you have never been there so we can create this picture however best you see it.
So, Iceland.
The experienced fisherman was an Icelander. He knows the lake much better than you ever will. But since you did get any fish, you begin to doubt him.
No evidence. No fish. Nothing to back his credential.
In that chilly lake, you only see hot air. That is what you were sold. Hot air.
Nobody can convince you otherwise.
But the truth is, while experience matters, so does your pond selection.
Wall Street is filled with many experienced degrees. Hard-earned degrees. But the returns may hardly show. Emphasis, may.
Now, did the owners of these degrees find the right pool?
They may still flaunt Ivy League certification. That, to them, is the money. If these credentials are money to them, well, in a real sense..
Money in your palm don’t make you real — Jermaine
Because you want something you can feel. A fish from a fishing pond. Evidence. A document. Ivy League or not, can easily be forged.
As for this fishing trip, there was no fish. Conclusion? Their experience is nothing. Their degree certificates mean nothing.
But experience is meaningless if it has to apply everywhere, every time.
I like to think of experience as context-dependent.
If your pond is always changing, it’s difficult to say you have an idea of it. You can have 10 years of experience, but your prediction is as good as a coin toss.
The Wall Street trader cannot compare to a chess master.
For a grandmaster, experience means a lot. A single game might be all you need to see it. They don’t just have a single move. They have batches of moves.
They picked a fairly stable pond.
The Wall Street traders have to change their models every other time.
They may have been taught the ‘fundamentals of economics’ but the only fundamental aspect in the world of economics is the world is fickle. With agents motivated by pockets, status and greed, your experience may be pointless.
Emphasis, may.
On a chessboard, the agents are limited to 64 spaces.
Yes, the combinations are billions, but the probabilities of picking one over others are easily modelled with every move made.
Experience matters in such a fairly gentle pool, at any given time.
I picked a pool, but I can only say that in retrospect — Here’s why.
Would you guess the pool I picked?
The truth is, I did not pick the pool. It picked me.
Rather, I found myself in the pool.
I found myself in the field of evolution when I had known all along I was going to do surgery.
Surgery has always been the plan. I loved neuroanatomy. It was one of the easiest and most riveting topics.
I also loved the heart. I imagined holding a beating heart in an operating room.
When I was in primary, my brother introduced me to Grey’s Anatomy. I enjoyed seeing Christina Yang talk of the heart with authority.
I later learnt to love bones in my final year of high school. My biology teacher brought a full skeleton to class.
The impact of a teacher can be the reason for a life-long career change.
These were all pools I would have swung my fishing rod at.
But midway on campus, curiosity got the better of me. I started asking questions and seeking answers. But I got answers I was not satisfied with.
I wanted answers with depth but I was on the shallow end of this pool.
I then steered the boat further inward. The result was more knowledge and experience.
The list of individual achievements can grow longer the more you continue staying in your pool
In this pool that I got lost in, I would get different types of fish.
Usually, I would know what I did not want but would get awestruck by what I did not expect.
I’m writing down names, I’m making a list
I’m checking it twice and I’m getting’ em hit
Before I knew it, I was in an ocean, without knowledge of where the shores were.
Initially, I picked a shore, went fishing, and now I cannot find my way out. I picked a field, dove headfast and I cannot get out.
But I don’t feel dead inside this field. I am alive more than ever.
The point? Pick a pond large enough to sustain you.
I picked a pond with intrigue. It was a field that has not made many significant changes.
The dominant voice is Darwin’s. Many followers, the other fishermen, like to consider themselves Darwinians. Again, the influence of a teacher can be lifelong.
Darwin, through his works, has taught many students in death than when he was alive.
My teachers, those I look up to, endorse much of what Darwin says, but disagree in various aspects.
In this pond of evolution, what sustains me is curiousity. It gets bets bigger every day. My fishing rod and hook is my theory, Organismal Selection.
I have learnt to fish. I’d love to call myself an experienced fisherman. But I am the easiest person to fool. I don’t want to fool myself.
Regardless, I want to go where the sharks are. Yes, sharks are also fish.
Here are the take-home points
You can have fishing experience, but be in the wrong pond
You can be in the right pond with little experience. Your record of the many fish you have collected will always best the experienced fisherman in an impoverished pond.
He has no fish. You do.
Similarly, if you want to write, go there there are eyes.
If you want to fish, go there there are fish.
It might not be as simple as I paint it. But it’s a good place to start.
What’s more, there are parts of a pond, whichever pond, that have not been explored. Let curiosity guide you there.
I am in one of those corners of the evolutionary pond where I only hear muffled voices masked by the loud voice of Darwin and his followers.
But more important is to know the difference.
A loud voice nearby is a muffled one when heard from far away,
And nobody knows the map of the pool they are in. So find yourself in your pond, get your record of fish collected and tell the world about your territory.
That’s my next mission, that’s why I can’t quit
I’m drawing the map.
But in the meantime, I fish.
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