The Secret Is There Is No Secret

Plus, Asimov’s prescience on weaponized expertise — Monday Dispatch - 2025/04/28

Have you ever run into an ad for content like “real estate investor shares his secret to wealth,” or “here’s the secret to earn thousands with crypto and AI”?

It always baffles me how these “tutorials” get traction. How likely is it that someone who found an edge in real estate investing, crypto trading, or any other relatively zero-sum game, decided to share it with the world? Besides, an edge usually relies on an asymmetry of information—level the playing field and the edge is gone. But even without this chain of reasoning, you only have to watch one of those videos to understand they’re, at best, clickbait.

Yet, there’s a seemingly endless stream of those videos. I guess it goes to show how so many of us strive to do better, and how alluring it is to look for a shortcut there. “If only I knew the secret…”