May 4, 2022
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/every-bay-area-house-party
You walk in. The wall decorations vaguely suggest psychedelia. The music is pounding, head-splitting, amelodious. Everyone is struggling to speak over it. Everyone assumes everyone else likes it.
You flee to the room furthest from the music source. Three or four guys are sitting in a circle, talking. Two girls are standing by a weird lamp, drinks in hand. You see Bob.
“Hi, Bob!”
“Hey, good to see you again!”
“What’s new?”
“Man, it’s been a crazy few months. You hear I quit my job at Google and founded a fintech startup?”
“No! What do you do?”
“War insurance!”
“War insurance?”
“Yeah. We pay out if there’s a war.”
“Isn’t that massively correlated risk?”