On the Edge

The Art of Risking Everything

By: Nate Silver

Narrated by: Nate Silver

Length: 15 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's summary

NAMED A MOST-ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2024 BY FT, The Guardian, and The Sunday Times

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Signal and the Noise, the definitive guide to our era of risk—and the players raising the stakes

In the bestselling The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver showed how forecasting would define the age of Big Data. Now, in this timely and riveting new book, Silver investigates “the River,” the community of like-minded people whose mastery of risk allows them to shape—and dominate—so much of modern life.

These professional risk-takers—poker players and hedge fund managers, crypto true believers and blue-chip art collectors—can teach us much about navigating the uncertainty of the twenty-first century. By immersing himself in the worlds of Doyle Brunson, Peter Thiel, Sam Bankman-Fried, Sam Altman, and many others, Silver offers insight into a range of issues that affect us all, from the frontiers of finance to the future of AI.

Most of us don’t have traits commonly found in the River: high tolerance for risk, appreciation of uncertainty, affinity for numbers—paired with an instinctive distrust of conventional wisdom and a competitive drive so intense it can border on irrational. For those in the River, complexity is baked in, and the work is how to navigate it. People in the River have increasing amounts of wealth and power in our society, and understanding their mindset—and the flaws in their thinking—is key to understanding what drives technology and the global economy today.

Taking us behind the scenes from casinos to venture capital firms, and from the FTX inner sanctum to meetings of the effective altruism movement, On the Edge is a deeply reported, all-access journey into a hidden world of power bro­kers and risk-takers.

* This audiobook edition includes a downloadable PDF of charts and a glossary of terms from the book.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2024 Nate Silver (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Fascinating report from a distant land

In the language of Nate Silver, I am a lifelong Villager— conventional, square, behind every curve. Like the Lewis & Clark of advanced probabilistic thinking, he brings back vivid reports of a world I dimly perceive. I wouldn’t gamble if you paid me, but his analysis of poker playing is riveting. He starts with something we recognize and builds out from there into increasingly complex structures of thought. He is relentlessly fascinating. This is a wide ranging, artfully structured book. He is a great witty companion. My only complaint is that this book ends. I wanted more.

Fun and well-articulated discussion of managed risks

Full disclosure, I’m a fan of Nate Silver’s writing. I know a lot of folks don’t enjoy him, but for those who enjoy his somewhat snarky, plain spoken style, this book is a treat.

Loved it

Really fun book, really spoke to me. I play competitive magic the gathering. The one part I didn’t enjoy was his impressions. Who told him to keep the silly voices? Haha.

grest review of risk

loved concise explanations of čomplex ideas. did a good job of giving overview of risk

Some signal among lots of noise

Some genuinely great info/takes buried in a tome of meandering anecdotes and tenuously connected themes. I was so excited for this book but it really just needed a more ruthless editor that could take Silver's great takes and package them into a great book. Great content, okay book.

Also malpractice to talk about EA so much without mentioning all the truly incredible things that community does... Like in a book about risk why not mention the life threatening risks of kidney donation that they routinely take to help others for example.

Good content, Unbearable narrator

Nate reads his book in the same way that a car would accelerate full throttle for 300 yards and stop violently without at a stop sign without notice.

I love Nate Silver

I didnt have “nate silver ascending to my pantheon of favorite thinkers” on my bingo card but I should have.

Why does he speak so fast

Is he training to rap on top of being a poker player? I mean I can slow it down but it comes out weird as well

Fascinating overall

Some of the more theoretical parts dragged a little, but overall very interesting and entertaining. Went through this quicker than most books. Silver’s narration gave it a much more personal feel, and so was more engaging, though he speaks so fast I did have to rewind occasionally to understand him. The gambling sections were fascinating- the venture capital and Silicon Valley sections did not improve my opinion of that culture. I found all the AI hand-wringing baffling because it seems so misfocused. LLM’s can’t even do math, we aren’t close to a world-destroying catastrophe. What we are close to is turning the internet and all our media into utter trash where reality and hallucinations are indistinguishable. More thought should be given to that near-term danger and the inevitable responses and repercussions that will lay the landscape for future AI development. Shooting past all that to estimating the likelihood of a singularity or extinction-level event comes off like dorm-room bong talk.

Canoeing Down the River

I am an average person with a healthy dose of curiosity. So getting a tour of the world of River people was interesting because I don’t hang out with these types. I understood maybe 75% of the content of this book, but I still enjoyed the ride. I was most impressed with Nate’s narration—a pleasant surprise. He does act out a few other people (as well as ChatGPT), and his impression of Sam Bankman-Fried of the collapsed FTX was especially fun to listen to.