You think adventure is easy? Ha! There is a reason for the stark bifurcation in this world between men of action and those that choose to stay in bed. The social ramifications of which are particularly dire. That's Carl Jung.
"The world is full of people suffering from the effects of their own unlived life. They become bitter, critical, or rigid, not because the world is cruel to them, but because they have betrayed their own inner possibilities..."
Allow me to elaborate.
2026 marks the first year I've dedicated myself to entrepreneurship full-time. No W2, no employer, no backup plans: adventure. In that time I've built thousands of models, some capable of capturing a significant amount of variation and extraordinary explanatory power. Others? Iterations, some that led to more successful models, and some that were thrown out altogether.
One such model I use to guide and explain my own actions, and the actions of others. This is hardly a new concept. I've discussed this at length in many of my letters. I observe each of us as agents operating with a policy function guided overtly and covertly by a utility function dictating our action(s) in a chaotic n-dimensional stochastic system of differential equations.
The outcome of every action is unknown. We are making a bet that each action will yield positive expected value toward our desired reward, whatever it is. We can never perfectly predict the outcome of a single action, or the downstream implications, but if we are learning, if we are updating and iterating we will continue to make progress.
Qualitatively we must learn and continue to learn.
That is to say the only way to succeed is to willingly surrender that which you thought you knew for what actually works in the context of progress. So when do we stand our ground, when do we surrender? Welcome.
It is an uncertain process, and biologically we aren't rewarded for willingly assuming that uncertainty. We want to know NOW that everything will be ok.
We prefer structure, even if it's a house of cards. We prefer the first and fifteenth to an unknown number at the end of the month. That is why risk has and always will be mispriced. We want to survive. Uncertainty means we may not. But what happens when the fear of risk governs your actions?
You never begin to live.
What becomes of an agent that rejects the call for adventure? After all, it will be difficult. They may fail in pursuit. They will face challenges they are unprepared for, each one seeking to destroy them. Ultimately, they choose to reject the premise of adventure altogether. This is what Carl Jung is speaking of.
I've seen it myself.
I'm 26 years old and I've met dozens of people in a variety of workplaces from post-graduate academia, to high quant finance, to a local high school that have rejected the premise of adventure.
Why?
Because rejecting adventure is easier. It's not uncertain. This is not a trivial problem. There are a great many capable of extraordinary things that defeat themselves with what-ifs before they even hit the road. Again, it's not uncertain.
There are no trials to face that will seek to destroy you. There is no work to be done. There is no iteration, there is no action to take. It's an emotional hedge that wreaks havoc on an agent's utility function and consequent action(s) as the psychology literature has well documented.
I've met people that truthfully believe their idea should earn them $1,000,000.
They've told people about it and nothing came of it.
They can not fathom that it is the breathing of life into the idea from nothing, building from scratch, pivoting, iterating that is what ultimately yields success.
The process of building is violently painful and one that you can only undertake if you care deeply, genuinely love what you are building, and are willing to suffer (a lot) for it. Many that have suffered tremendously in their personal lives go on to find success in entrepreneurship, not because it's easy, but because they have the endurance to outlast the suffering that would command others to quit.
Failure and suffering is required for success.
I've experienced failure more times than I can count. Especially in the quiet moments of what masquerades as insignificant: a cluster of negative emails, a cluster of rejections, that is what you must surmount every day. It impacts your perception of progress, perhaps even your mood and relationships with those around you, you may question if what you are working on will work out at all.
Adventure. It is necessarily the most difficult thing you can experience.
We'd like to think otherwise, but why is it that everyone isn't a multi-millionaire Founder and CEO? What is there worth doing in this world, especially for yourself, that is without challenge? What movie commands our hero to face a challenge and give up? Nobody wants to be like that hero.
We have to choose actions inline with the hero we want to be like.
When we get knocked down, and it happens a tremendous number of times, believe me, we have two options: get up or stay down. Trivial?
Sure, but the choice dictates what happens in the final act of the show.
When I started my entrepreneurial endeavors I would get knocked down all the time, mostly by metrics, cash flow, an inability to support myself. I had faith in myself and what I was building, that I could survive. But, at least at the time, nobody knew my name.
Getting knocked down was painful, but getting up was reasonably easy relative to the trials and tribulations I've otherwise faced in my life. Adventure.
Then something changed, something I wasn't prepared for.
I started to get knocked down...by people? I was confused. I built a castle in the woods, I'd tend to a garden I quite enjoy. I genuinely believed that others would leave me in peace. That the barbarians on foot wouldn't seek to destroy my castle or my garden. I am wiser now. People began attacking my castle, my garden. Failures were now not just driven by my own inadequate actions, but by others that wanted me to get knocked down, and stay down.
There is a particular vitriol I did not see coming in a variety of different failures and attacks on what it is that I'm building. From depicting my funeral with no attendants, to erasing my server data, to wishing death to me, my dog, my family I've been exposed to more of the psychological consequences of suffering than most can experience in a lifetime. These words and actions hurt, they are some of the most painful things I've had to endure to stay the course.
But it is not my suffering alone that I'm speaking of. I am experiencing the byproduct of the suffering of others that aim to destroy me.
What an experience.
I have such a tremendous amount of pain in my heart for these people that seek to destroy me for both their attacks on my person, and their own suffering.
What an experience.
I speak to people close to me about this hatred: why does it bother you, Roman? How can you possibly trivialize my experience in that manner? Have you learned or read nothing? Have you built nothing?
Listen hear, idiot, I am in the position to receive this hatred not you. I care about my work, my community, and it is the only reason I stand here today. Asking me not to care is like asking Superman not to save Louis Lane. How can you possibly not see this? If I don't care, then there is no Quant Guild. Some champion that would be a better reality, one without me in it. And that is why I care. It is the only reality where I alongside all of my creations exist.
No castle would be standing before you if I didn't have an egregious capacity to care about everything. I haven't missed a Tuesday or Friday video lecture ever since I started posting them.
Speak to me when you have the backlog of hatred and threats that I do in your email, Reddit, Discord, X, YouTube comments, Instagram comments, the list goes on. Until then, you remain the critic on the sidelines like everyone else. Who did I say was there for you again when you get knocked down? Yeah, nobody.
We can cite Voltaire, empiricism, and I think it's productive. But the most important question I can seek to answer is: why would anyone seek to behave in this manner? My model resolves this too.
We never act against our own self interest.
Criticism and hatred are two separate things. I am speaking of hatred. Where does this come from and why does this occur? Opinion used to be precisely that, an opinion. If you don't like watermelon, you don't like watermelon. But now, a particular problem, is that of slander, defamation, libel, and the likes in that we must support our opinions with subjective truth (we used to call these lies back in the day) to justify them.
You don't like me? Cool, we're good, we can go our separate ways. But now it becomes: I don't like you because you got fired from Bloomberg and pretend to be knowledgable. Well now we face a problem, because that is not true. All of the actions you take downstream are predicated on a lie that justify your misdoings. This behavior universally explains a significant amount if not all the variation in the system, giving structure to the notion of you can justify anything.
So then why? Why do these people take these actions? Full-circle to the call for adventure and the unlived life. If you never began to live, and observe other people living their life, taking action in a way you believe you never will or could how can you not hate them?
Existence becomes a game, you must then justify inaction by trying to destroy the actions of others. That adventure I rejected couldn't possibly have been worth it, right? I'll make this apparent to everyone seeking it themselves. Funny enough, it's always easier to burn the castle down than it is to build it. Many will live their entire lives this way, I've seen dozens of examples already in my short life, and it's a shame.
Not just a shame for them, but a shame for all of the castles they are going to attempt to destroy or have already succeeded in destroying.
How can we possibly resist such devastation?
The only antidote is never-ending action.
When my server of 6 years was destroyed I wrote a note to the men in this world that seek to destroy me: good luck. I will forever take action to build and rebuild my garden. It will always be more plentiful than they could ever hoped to destroy. I got knocked down. I got up. Not one time. Every time. That's adventure.
Did it hurt tremendously? Yes. That's adventure.
Do I wish it didn't happen? Of course. That's adventure.
Did those closest to me trivialize it? Of course they did. That's adventure.
I choose to get up every single time, no matter how battered or bloodied I am because I see the alternative. I see the devastation, not just to myself but to others. I see what it means to not become that which you are capable of becoming. It saddens me to my core, it rips my heart out, and I have sympathy for them even as they come to destroy me and everything I've built.
So let these poor souls have their field day. I pray they will one day answer their own call to adventure and have no capacity to wreak their havoc.
I've answered the call to adventure, I know what I've signed up for.
Adventure.
- Roman
Roman Paolucci
