Betting the Impossible: 

The Perfect Plan That Wasn't:

I was given the opportunity not to be a doctor.

My parents didn’t have that choice. Growing up in India, they had two options: become a physician or become an engineer. They made sure my sister and I grew up differently. We were given the greatest privilege anyone can have: the freedom to choose what we wanted to do. Of course, even they were disappointed when I told them I wanted to become a professional gambler.

It was 2008, and I was in sixth grade. Wall Street had just caused the worst recession since the Great Depression. I watched the news and listened to the adults talk, but none of it made sense. How could a select few individuals have caused such widespread devastation? How could they have gambled so recklessly with the livelihoods of everyday people? And, above all, how could they have been so greedy?

These were supposed to be the smartest people in the world, and yet it seemed a middle schooler could find the fault in their logic. They had placed blind faith in models built on incorrect assumptions. What I couldn’t understand was why no one had stopped to ask how the models worked – or if they were even correct?

It was then, as a sixth grader, that I realized a simple truth about the world: people are terrified of looking foolish. If a ‘smart’ person tells you something, you’re expected to accept it as fact. Few dare to ask why, because most would rather be accepted and wrong than risk being right and ostracized. By concealing the flaws in their models under layers of math and financial wizardry, Wall Street had convinced themselves and the world that 2+2 = 5. After all, who was anyone to question the greatest minds in the world?

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