The Most Improbable Thing

The universe seems to strive for equilibria; for perfect states and manageable forms. In humans, this is homeostasis. In ecological systems it’s called dynamic equilibrium. For Yoda, there was ‘a balance in the force’.

Whatever you call it, there’s a sense in which the universe has a default direction.

If you leave something alone, it naturally moves towards a spirit of sameness in the name of balance.

Drop ink in water and it spreads until the whole glass is uniformly coloured. You’d never see it spontaneously concentrate back into a drop.

Likewise, if you heat a room and then open a window, the warmth dissipates until inside and outside are the same temperature. Until the difference disappears. Until everything is balanced, and everything is the same.

Another way to describe this, in the world of physics, is entropy.

It is interesting then, that there are two ways to describe entropy:

1. Entropy is the degradation of the matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity.

Taking both at once: uniformity is death.

Life clearly runs against this.

Plants take in disordered raw materials – water, carbon dioxide and light – and uses them to build something specific and organised.

Similarly, your brain takes in stable nutrients and builds the most complex arrangement of matter we know of, even despite the nanometre detail of silicon chips.

The direction of live, of all living things, over billions of years, has been towards increasing improbability and complexity. And this drive, while looking random in its iterations, is incredibly deliberate.

You make take it that I’m pointing towards evolution. But I’d wager there is much more in this vein.

Alone in the Universe

I can’t find the post now, as he is far too prolific a writer, but Kevin Kelly wrote a post once about the need to become ‘improbable’, as the key to an interesting and varied life.

But even if that wasn’t your goal specifically, it’s worth following. Not least because it is exactly what the universe’s most complex systems do, in order to survive.

Entropy pulls everything into a puddle of uniform soup, and life pushes back.

Most people, without intending it, orient their lives on the wrong side of this equation. Because, of course, we enjoy predictability and the comfort it brings. We like knowing what to expect, and what is too great a risk.

I also think that, because of the systems we have built (career ladders et al) the easiest way to succeed seems to be becoming highly legible and highly uniform. If the pipeline you’re optimising for requires you to have certain achievements and qualifications; to have worked in certain places, the rules seem to optimise for sameness.

I wrote at length about this in my book, but this isn’t an accident. It is far easier to manage cogs in a system, than agentic beings.

So what stops people from being more improbable – more extraordinary in their outcomes?

The main reason, I think, is that improbability is hard to picture. Destruction you can imagine in vivid detail. Your relationship collapsing, your career falling apart, your city burning. It’s easier to imagine (and fear) all the ways things could go wrong.

But the improbable version of your life – genuinely flourishing, building something that didn’t exist before – resists that kind of clarity. It exists as a direction rather than a destination. A pull without a map.

So people pursue what they can picture, which tends to be very legible, very recognisable, and very similar to what already exists.

So then, it becomes obvious, for those paying attention, that the real opportunities lie in the hazy fog that most aren’t ready to picture. The alpha lies in being less legible. Because such people are scarce, and therefore valuable.

If you can become genuinely unlike anything else, there’s no direct comparison to be made, no obvious substitute, no race to the bottom on price or relevance.

The cosmological argument and the practical one point the same way.

A Map for Better Things

This is also, briefly, how things actually change.

The people who moved science, art, or ideas forward aren’t the most typical of their time. They are those who combined things that weren’t supposed to go together.

They often came from backgrounds that didn’t fit the expected profile and took a perspective nobody else was using.

Only improbable people can produce unpredictable things, and do so on purpose.

The probable only reproduce what exists, and it’s all they’ve trained their minds for.

The spanner in the works is somewhat obvious.

A path that hasn’t already been illuminated is often a dark one, fraught with danger and barbs and confusion in the eyes of anyone on a clearer, more legible path.

Improbability has its costs.

When you don’t fit a known category you often don’t make it through the first filter. For job applications, for pitches, and parties alike.

What becoming more improbable actually looks like in practice is less a strategy you execute and more something you have to keep choosing not to lose.

Every system you participate in pushes you toward a more standardised version of yourself - a processable version that fits the bill and matches expectations.

Improbability is mostly what remains when you keep resisting that pressure over time. Not by setting out to be difficult, but by refusing to become ‘easier’ to process. Easier on the casual eye. Easier to chew up and spit out.

The choice, as always, is yours.