Put 1,000 patent attorneys at the edge of a minefield.
Each has a 50% chance of crossing. 500 make it. Half survive. Acceptable odds?
Now take one attorney and make them cross 1,000 times. 50% chance of crossing each time. The odds of surviving 1,000 crossings in a row? 0.5^1000. Effectively zero.
Same 50% chance. Completely different game. Because the crowd’s average is not the individual’s path. The poor lone attorney doesn’t get to run again after blowing up.
This is the ergodicity idea (Nassim Taleb, Ole Peters): ensemble probability vs. time average.
I keep coming back to one thought. IP doesn’t have more risk than other domains. It has more irreversibility. In most domains you can wait for more information before moving. In IP you can get caught in an irreversible position through inaction as well. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
I am still working out what this means for how IP strategy should be run. But one conclusion already feels locked in: in the IP game you only play once, so survival must come before value. No one wants to be the one repeatedly crossing the minefield.
Where’s your line between a risk you can carry and a mistake you can’t undo?
