Ontic Oren

I think life is really all about balancing our risk / reward ratios.

For the past year, our dog has spent 1 day/week at Smilin Dogs. We first found them when Olivia saw a neighbor’s dog bouncing 5′ in the air with this white van picking him up. These guys have a great model - they have 750 acres they’re renting out in the HMB coastal area. They take packs of dogs to hike and play all day. Our dog loves it - I’ve never seen an animal get so excited as when they come to pick him up. He’s happy, tired, and satisfied when he gets home.

Since we first started looking, there have always been rumors of issues. Friends in the guide-dog community, vet techs, others, have whispered about dogs getting hurt, lost, etc. After hearing a friend relate how one dog broke his leg, Olivia and I reluctantly canceled the service. The owner, Conrad, quickly called to find out why. He was very polite, and was genuinely curious to know if there was anything he could do. During the call, he said something that resonated to my core - “this is inherently risky. We walk them off leash, with a pack of dogs, in a wild enviornment. We could keep them locked up, and it would be much safer. But that’s why you chose us in the first place.” And he’s totally right. Of course, if my dog was at home in a kenel all day, he would be safe. And sad. Conrad has explicitly set out to run a business with inhrent risk, and with great reward for the dogs that participate.

These guys take safety seriously. They are literally doing everything they can to mitigate the inherent risk in their endeavor. They run report cards on each dog every time they go. They eject any dogs that aren’t acceptable. Conrad personally interviews every single dog that comes in. Yes, every now and then a dog gets lost. Apparently new dogs sometimes get a little freaked out, usually they haven’t been properly dog socialized, and run away. So far, Smilin Dogs has always found the dog the next day. Yes, dogs get hurt. One excited dog ran into another one, and broke the poor guys leg. But that could happen at the dog park just as easily. They take thousands of dogs up ever year, and apparently have a very small incident ratio. They have understood the risk, the randomness, and the reward, and have taken the right steps to put the ratio into a positive balance.

I’m willing to take risks in my life - for my job, for my wife, for myself - that pay off with huge rewards. There’s no such thing as a 100% safe environment. We all lose sight of the impact of randomness in our life, and I lost sight just this past week. Olivia and I talked it over, and realized that we were losing perspective. Starting this Thursday, Indy will be VERY happy once again. For the right dog (well socialized, gregarious, not-aggressive, friendly) Smilin Dogs is the BEST treat I believe you can give them.

Conrad, thanks for taking the time to call, and taking the time to personally care so much about this. You’ve taken a risk yourself with this business, and hopefully it’s one that we can all reward.

Hey Mr. Big Shot, how did you get there? We humans seem to have serious issues considering the role randomness plays in our life. I’ve run into this many times before - my least favorite boss ever was the typical “Master of the universe” type who insisted it was his way or the highway. He justified this since he had “been successful so many times before”. You run into these people all the time. Survivor bias is a nasty nasty thing. One of my favorite books - Fooled by Randomness - has a great thought experiment:

Assume someone offered you $1M to play Russian Roulette. Would you? I’d argue that almost everyone out there can evaluate if this makes sense for them - I’m sure most would say no, but someone desperate enough may well say yes, and know what they’re getting into. Now let’s say that you are offered $1M/year, for 30 years to play it ever year. Now would you? You would have to be insane.

But what if 100, 1,000, or 1,000,000 people all did in fact play this “game”.

After 30 years, you’d have over 4,000 people with $30M. Yes, you’d have almost 1,000,000 dead people too, but hey, that’s 4,000 very RICH people. And I bet they would find each other, and offer the fact that there are THOUSANDS of them as PROOF that if you follow their SUREFIRE method, you too can be a multi-millionaire, GUARANTEED! Just jump on one foot before pulling the trigger. Or maybe flap your arms. Or pray to your god. We really are just pigeons.

Want to know what the odds are? Go ahead and play with some numbers:

Ontic?  What the hell is Ontic?  Honestly, it’s such a pretentious word that even the definitions leave me baffled.

“‘ontic’ is an abstract way of denoting the object-domain of a particular scientific area, field, or inquiry.”

So look at this blog as my study of the real, even if it sometimes talks about virtualized stuff being real.

I’ve aggregated the postings from my other blogs here, and will be posting exclusively here moving forward… except for food.  Food deserves it’s own blog - keep checking out All In for food (and travel, and maybe wine, and…).

I got a Kindle when it came out, and love it. Yes, the ID is terrible. And WTF is up with the back button? But it’s changed reading for me. I’ve been tearing through books again, and enjoying it all the time.Being a geek, it’s not enough to just read, I’ve got to share too! So, I’ve added a goodreads widget over there on the right side. Take a look at the books I’m reading, and suggest some more! I’m running out of ideas - there are too many out there, I get overwhelmed.