In 1997, Warren Buffett, the famous billionaire investor, proposed a thought experiment.
"Imagine you are born 24 hours later," he said, "and a genius approaches you."
“Genius says that you can determine and shape the rules of the society you will enter, whatever you want. You have the opportunity to shape the social rules, the economic rules, the state rules. And these rules will prevail. for their lives and the lives of their children and the lives of their grandchildren. "
" But there is a catch, "he said.
“You don't know whether you were born rich or poor, man or woman, sick or able, in the USA or in Afghanistan. All you know is that with 5.8 billion bullets you can get one bullet out of a barrel. And that's you. "
" In other words, "Buffett continues," You're going to take part in what I call the Ovarian Lottery.And that is the most important thing that will happen to you in your life. It will determine a lot more than what school you go to, how hard you work, all sorts of things. ”
Buffett has long been an advocate of the role of luck in success. In his 2014 annual letter, he wrote, "By sheer luck, [my business partner] Charlie and I were born in the United States, and we will forever be grateful for the amazing benefits this birth accident brought us."
That way explains, it seems difficult to deny the importance of luck, chance and happiness in life. And indeed these factors play a fundamental role. But let's consider a second story.
The story of the project 523
In 1969, in the fourteenth year of the During the Vietnam War, a Chinese scientist named Tu Youyou was appointed director of a secret research group in Beijing.The unit was known only by its code name: Project 523.
China was an ally of Vietnam and Project 523 was set up to develop anti-malarial drugs that could be administered to soldiers. The disease had become a big problem. many Vietnamese soldiers died of malaria in the jungle and died in combat.
Tu began looking for clues wherever he could find them. He read manuals on old home remedies. He looked for ancient texts that were hundreds or thousands of years old.He traveled to remote regions in search of plants that might contain a cure.
After months of work, his team had collected more than 600 plants and made a list of almost 2000 possible remedies. Slowly and methodically, Tu narrowed the list of possible drugs to 380 and tested them individually on laboratory mice.
“This was the most difficult phase of the project,” he said. "It was a very tedious and arduous job, especially when faced with one failure after another."
Hundreds of tests were performed. Most of them didn't throw anything. But one test, an extract from the sweet wormwood plant Qinghao, looked promising. Tu was excited about the possibility, but despite her best efforts, the plant only occasionally produces a strong anti-malarial drug.It wouldn't always work.
His team had been working for two years but decided to start over. They went through each proof and reread each book looking for a clue of something that was lost. Then he magically stumbled upon a single sentence in The Emergency Recipe Manual, an ancient Chinese text written more than 1,500 years ago.
The problem was the heat, if the temperature was too high during the extraction process, the active ingredient of the sweet wormwood plant was destroyed, Tu redesigned the experiment with lower boiling solvents and finally had an antimalarial drug that worked 100 percent all over Time.
It was a breakthrough, but the real work was just beginning.