The Options of Sweet Grapes
Having options grants freedom, helps discover true preferences, and prevents sour grapes rationalization. The concept, illustrated by Thales, shows that optionality—asymmetric upside over downside—is a vector of antifragility.
THE IDEA
The Options of Sweet Grapes
The option I am talking about is no different from what we call options in daily life—the vacation resort with the most options is more likely to provide you with the activity that satisfies your tastes, and the one with the narrowest choices is likely to fail. So you need less information, that is, less knowledge, about the resort with broader options.
There are other hidden options in our story of Thales. Financial independence, when used intelligently, can make you robust; it gives you options and allows you to make the right choices. Freedom is the ultimate option.
Further, you will never get to know yourself—your real preferences—unless you face options and choices. Recall that the volatility of life helps provide information to us about others, but also about ourselves. Plenty of people are poor against their initial wish and only become robust by spinning a story that it was their choice to be poor—as if they had the option. Some are genuine; many don’t really have the option—they constructed it. Sour grapes—as in Aesop’s fable—is when someone convinces himself that the grapes he cannot reach are sour. The essayist Michel de Montaigne sees the Thales episode as a story of immunity to sour grapes: you need to know whether you do not like the pursuit of money and wealth because you genuinely do not like it, or because you are rationalizing your inability to be successful at it with the argument that wealth is not a good thing because it is bad for one’s digestive system or disturbing for one’s sleep or other such arguments. So the episode enlightened Thales about his own choices in life—how genuine his pursuit of philosophy was. He had other options. And, it is worth repeating, options, any options, by allowing you more upside than downside, are vectors of antifragility.1
Thales, by funding his own philosophy, became his own Maecenas, perhaps the highest rank one can attain: being both independent and intellectually productive. He now had even more options. He did not have to tell others—those funding him—where he was going, because he himself perhaps didn’t even know where he was heading. Thanks to the power of options, he didn’t have to.
When to use it
Career choices: Pursuing a side business or skill as an option to test genuine interest in entrepreneurship without leaving a stable job.
Investment: Using options contracts or other financial instruments that provide upside with limited downside to explore market bets.
Personal growth: Exposing yourself to various hobbies, social circles, or experiences to uncover hidden preferences and avoid sour grapes narratives.
Negotiation: Maintaining multiple alternatives (BATNA) to ensure you act from a position of freedom, not necessity.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Sour Grapes Rationalization
A person eagerly applies to a company, then dismisses its culture and work immediately after being rejected. That change may be sour grapes if it is a way to devalue an unavailable option. The useful question is whether new evidence changed the assessment or disappointment did.
Thales' Financial Independence
Thales, the ancient Greek philosopher, used his knowledge of olive harvests to corner the market and earn a fortune. This gave him financial independence, allowing him to pursue philosophy without external constraints. The options he created helped him discover his true passion and avoid the sour grapes trap of rationalizing poverty as a virtue.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
What options do you currently have in your life that allow you to know your true preferences? How can you create more such options?
Recall a time when you convinced yourself that something you couldn't obtain was not desirable. Was it genuine distaste or a sour grapes rationalization?
How can you structure your decisions to have asymmetric upside (options) rather than linear payoffs?
Often confused with
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Antifragile (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)