The Tradeoff

I had a boss, my first boss at Amazon, who used to say something that's always stuck with me. He and I would leave work around 6 pm together, something he encouraged, and on our way out, we'd get shit from our operation partners who'd often stay until 8 or 9 pm. They'd tell us we were working banker hours, or say something like, "oh must be nice." And his response was always the same, "Life is full of choices." This last year I launched my own fulfillment center at Amazon where I was the position that he would have once occupied, and when faced with the same shit from my operation partners, I learned to use that phrase liberally. 

But life is full of choices. In fact, life is choices. Your life is the result of the choices you make from the infinite decision tree of time. And lately I've been thinking a lot about this. As I continue to age, and as my experience continues to compound, I learn the meaning of his phrase. It goes deeper than just the choices you made. Some choices in life are choosing between bad and worse, so at least you can choose bad and not worse. Others are choosing between good and great, and you hope you'll choose right in that circumstance too. In both cases, there is one option, one direction, left by the wayside as the other is chosen. In economics, the term Opportunity Cost refers to this concept. There's a cost to the choice you made. In the case of "bad and worse," the cost is positive even if you chose "bad." In the case of "good and great," the cost would be negative even if you chose "good." And this is where my observations have been as of late. In my maturity I'm beginning to see not just the choices I've made but I'm now seeing the choices I didn't make. The good ones and the bad. And I want to amend my old boss's phrase to be this, "Life is a tradeoff."

When you study science or math, you often discover that the concepts uncovered can be found in nature, not just on paper, or in society. For example, you can apply the Pareto distribution to almost anything regardless of it's animate status or quantity - points scored in the NBA by the whole list of players, records that go platinum from the full list of recording artists, wealth accumulated by a small few, divided by the total number of humans, offspring of the highest ranking chimps from the total sum of male chimps in a tribe. "To those with everything, more is given, to those with nothing, everything is taken," the Matthew Principle taken from the Bible. Even the ancients figured it out. The point here is that my concept of Life Being a Tradeoff goes well beyond making choices. In it's simplest form, at any given time you are capable of making a choice, from a set of at least two choices, creating a tradeoff, a cost. You can sleep or you can go to the gym. But in a much deeper sense, this concept can be found in almost every facet of existence. And this is what I want to explore.

In my experience, tradeoffs come in two forms, Contrived and Derived. Contrived tradeoff's are optional, they are created, or contrived, optionally, from a known set of possibilities and combinations. Derived tradeoffs are tradeoffs that are result from a set of fixed conditions. These conditions are not optional. A choice is not at play here. In one of the most popular anime of all time, Full Metal Alchemist, tradeoff is the central theme of the show, which makes sense because the central principle of alchemy is creation and destruction, inputs and outputs, which is why the elusive Philosopher's Stone is not possible, it is pure creation without destruction. Output with no input. In the show, the two brothers try to bring their dead mother back to life using alchemy. They gather the ingredients that comprise a human and then go through the process of human-transmutation. The result is that one brother loses his arm, and the other brother loses his whole body. There is no gain without sacrifice, no reward without investment. 

That's an extreme and fictional example of what I'm discussing, but there are real world examples of contrived and derived tradeoffs. Everyone knows the common ones: Building muscle requires missing out on some tasty and unhealthy food, good grades requires missing a few football games and parties. Some people even know the esoteric tradeoffs: Any cosmic body greater than or equal to 4x the mass of the sun has the possibility of degradation into a black hole once the fuel source is exhausted and gravity outweighs matter. But I want to discuss two contrarian tradeoffs, one of each kind, contrived and derived. These are perhaps under discussed do to politicization, but nonetheless they are real, at least from my observations. 

We know that drugs are a tradeoff, not from the sociological standpoint of withdrawal from society due to addiction, but I'm speaking of the neurochemical affect. Some drugs act on dopamine and others on serotonin. Too much or too little of either can produce reaction, and can drastically alter cognitive state. Cocaine enhances dopamine and produces a sensation of mental clarity and energy. Alcohol, in rising blood concentration levels, acts to enhance dopamine and in falling blood concentration levels becomes a serotonin inducing mechanism. This is all to say that we know for a fact, the cognitive state is system in which tradeoffs are possible within the brain. Individuals with Asperger's obtain an impressive IQ at the expense of EQ. And that is the genesis of my contrarian viewpoint on this particular Derived Tradeoff. I postulate the following: The spectrum of neuro-cognitive phenotypes exist in a system of derived tradeoffs. Each one our individual brain-states lie in this spectrum. Everything from Autism to Asperger's, introversion to extroversion, left-brained to right-brained, take their linear positions as axioms of this multidimensional system, which ultimately plays with tradeoffs. Some people are very personable, they are communicative and extroverted, they love to speak, but they are perhaps less introspective. Maybe they don't enjoy hours in front of a book alone, or at their laptop programming. They are more inclined to be salesmen and not computer scientists. Some people are very impressive when it comes to physical prowess. They can learn a skill or develop muscle rapidly. They understand games and rules and do well at almost any sport. They perhaps are less interested in history or literature or interpretive studies such as art or music. Some people are highly gifted at math and science. They can see three dimensional proteins structures rotating in their heads when trying to recall it for a test, or memorize second order derivate formulas because the math makes sense to them. They are perhaps less interested in happy hour or high school football games. Even still there are those with average skills for memorization, with decent physical prowess, who enjoy reading and writing, make B's in math class, and have a quantity of friends numbering around 10. They too fit in the spectrum. Thomas Sowell wrote a book on the Einstein Syndrome with regards to late talking children. He made the case that some children develop unevenly for a period in childhood due to rapid and extraordinary development in the analytical functions of the brain. This may temporarily "rob resources" from neighboring functions such as language development. This is a prime example of that cognitive Derived Tradeoff. 

The second contrarian viewpoint I want to discuss is a Contrived Tradeoff. I postulate the following, the socio-cultural landscape exists as a system of contrived tradeoffs. Over a ten year period I traveled to Italy, Ireland, Switzerland, England, Germany, Austria, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Argentina and Colombia. Within the United States I traveled to California, Alaska, New York, Michigan, the Carolinas, North Dakota, Washington, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Montana, and Texas. Each place presented various tradeoffs, some more extreme than others. In Italy, you must contend with socialized medicine and poor economic growth, but you can obtain a lifestyle based in a rich culture and history. It wasn't until I traveled to Colombia that I truly understood this universal concept. I was struck by the tradeoff of community for opportunity. These people took me in as one of their own. Treated me like I was family. I felt at home. I was delighted. The sense of community was incredibly strong. But around me was poverty and danger. There was little to no opportunity that wouldn't come without serious risk. In New Zealand I was struck by the tradeoff of beauty for prosperity. You could walk down to the shores in Queenstown and enjoy breathtaking views but if you wanted to be financially wealthy, you'd be in a place where that was almost impossible. In Argentina I was struck by the tradeoff between culture and stability. Walking the streets of Buenos Aires I was floored with the architecture. The mix of Italian, Spanish, and Native influences in the food and wine. The people were beautiful. The culture was strong. But the country experienced drastic economic swings almost cyclically. Corruption. Currency devaluation. Recession. I realized that America is the most balanced place. It is vast. You can find opportunity, culture, community, beauty, stability and prosperity. Best of all, you can create the right mix. And even in America there are microcosms of this tradeoff. In Arizona, you have to put up with the heat but you are struck by incredible topography. In Alaska, you must deal with 8 months of harsh winter but you can experience true nature, true wilderness, some of the last in the modern world. But these are derived. They are the result of climate and geography. I'm more focused on the less discussed contrived tradeoffs that the other countries I've mentioned possess. In Medellin for example, when you choose culture, community and comfort you sacrifice economic opportunity, voluntarily. In Buenos Aires you choose richness and vibrancy but must accept the seemly inevitable economic hardships that will befall your country. There are unicorn zones, like Salt Lake City, Dublin, Singapore and Charlotte, where you can obtain high quality living, at less than extreme cost, with low crime, proximity to varying topography, and year round, favorable climate, but the tradeoff is competition for opportunity and a piece of the pie, not as much as a place like Medellin granted, but nonetheless a degree of tradeoff always exists. 

I want to offer up one more tradeoff. One that seems to be a hybrid of Contrived and Derived, which I'll explain. The tradeoff is simplicity for fulfillment. In the last two or so years I've begun to understand that simplicity in life is coveted. Less strings attached. Less default commitments. Less dependencies.  Less variables. It comes with it's positives like flexibility and spontaneity. This is the life of the bachelor or bachelorette. They are in a sense, "free." But the tradeoff is fulfillment. Humans are social creatures, so social in fact that a lack of social recognition causes mental illness and extreme loneliness that can result in the worst possible outcome. Fulfillment as a human is incomplete without commitment, to an individual or set of individuals like a family. Therefore we are presented with a tradeoff. You can have the upsides associated with low commitment but you will experience, sooner or later, the downsides of low fulfillment. And visa versa with commitment, sacrificing simplicity. Being in a relationship, or having a family presents complicating factors, variables, and dependencies that will get in the way of personal time and work, but it is the only path to boost your chances of adult fulfillment and especially geriatric fulfillment. In this way, the tradeoff is contrived. The choice is optional, for the most part, you can decide to enter into marriage or decide to have a family. But the consequences are derived. They are unavoidable, particularly with reference to the consequences of little to no commitment. They are a function of our biology. And that is why this tradeoff is perhaps the most fundamental of all in life. It is transitional. It has it's phases of maturation. It is a tradeoff based on choice yet with consequences based in nature. 

In summary, it's quite incredible what one phrase or comment can do to alter your future thought patterns. Matt's proverb of sorts, repeated in 2018, ingrained itself in my head as a truism. It took hold as a theory and manifested into a doctrine with repeated observation and testing. The Tradeoff is as fundamental as Pythagoras' Theorem, Fibonacci's Sequence, Avogadro's Number. It's as universal and infinite as Pi. It's everywhere. It's unavoidable. It's life.