How to be a Tail
- kari lilt
- Dec 11, 2025
- 14 min read
This is not an article on how to be a furry. Furries, feel free to paw press the x on your browser right now.
For the rest of you, you’re probably wondering what a Tail is.
A Tail is a silly term I made up for a person who uses reality hacks to live an extraordinary life.
Not everyone wants to be extraordinary though - most people are happy in the comfortable middle. But I also think the “comfortable middle” was what Thoreau was referring to when he famously said “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation”. I myself would love to be a right tail, so I started obsessively thinking about what it takes to be one. This post documents my haphazard insights.
First, why “Tail”?
This is a standard normal distribution curve:
This distribution pattern is common in nature.
Many psych and bio phenomena follow a symmetrical, bell-shaped distribution curve as seem above. For example, if we were to plot the IQs of a 100 random people, most would cluster around the average, with fewer people at the extremes in the tails on either side.
Recently I saw a video of a Galton board simulation which illustrates this perfectly:
When balls are dropped, they hit pegs and bounce either left or right. These balls then accumulate into bins at the bottom in an approximate bell curve distribution.
This got me thinking.
In randomised conditions, the balls will follow a path of least resistance. Whether or not a ball falls into a middle bin or a tail bin depends on chance or luck. But what if you wanted to purposely fall into a tail bin?
Let’s view life as a game. How do we hack the game?
How do we become extraordinary people who do extraordinary things in this game of life? If we leave it up to chance, as the Galton board shows, we are probabilistically doomed to a life of mediocrity. In a normal curve of something like intelligence, skill, or impact, the rightmost tail symbolises excellence. Then how do we land in that tail of excellence? How do we become outliers by design?
Small disclaimer: from now on, when I refer to “Tails”, I mean right-bin Tails. Left-bin Tails are a whole other type of extraordinary. Probably more fun to talk about too, to be honest.
Here’s what I believe makes someone a Tail (my favourites in bold):
IDENTITY
EXECUTION
LEVERAGE
(You may skip ahead to any part)
Tails know themselves.
Tails have a very strong sense of identity. They know who they are and what they want. If you ask them what their top 5 core values are, they’ll look you right in the eyes and answer you immediately and confidently. In contrast, a non-tail will “umm” and “ahh” their way to an “I don’t know.”
These core principles are the roots from which all other aspects of their life grows - from their work, to relationships, to creative endeavours. Usually Tails discover these values through enduring hardships and learning from them intelligently (pain + reflection = growth).
Imagine a big great oak tree with thick roots. Not even the wildest storm could uproot it. But the same storm would absolutely demolish a flimsy tent. That’s the difference between a strong and weak identity.
This strong identity allows Tails to validate themselves instead of depending on external validation. They’re not afraid to contradict you if they have the evidence to back it up. Here’s how it shows up:
TAIL | NON-TAIL |
Can validate self | Craves external validation |
Seeks to connect with like-minded people | Seeks to impress everyone |
Proactive | Reactive |
Tactfully states their opinions, is not afraid to contradict | Will change their opinions to suit yours |
Does hard things when no one is looking | Is performative |
Genuinely caring | Performs care to achieve outcome |
Remember the Galton board? A ball hits a pin and randomly turns left or right. Meaning the trajectory of a ball is determined externally by the pins it hits. What if the ball could self-orient based on intrinsic values?
If you want to be a little bit more extreme about this...
Tails distort reality.
Tails know that reality is essentially subjective. Each person experiences reality through their own subjective lens, shaped by their own unique blend of biases.
Here’s a fascinating example of this. Studies show that depressed people have a decreased ability to see black-and-white contrast (as measured by retinal ECG measurements). Meaning depressed people view the world as less vivid, flatter, and greyer.
Or how about the fact that time perception is totally contextual? Our feeling of the passage of time is determined by what came before, and not what’s actually happening now.
If there is an objective reality beyond our subjective reality, then it is essentially superfluous, since all we have access to is our own qualia. Tails take advantage of this.
A Tail’s reality is so powerful that it distorts the realities of those around them. They know that their beliefs render reality in real time, and if they hold enough conviction it can influence others too. It doesn’t have to be obvious, and not all Tails desire that level of external influence, but if you ever meet a tail you’ll probably feel the difference.
Tails see brains as moist programs.
Tails know that brains are hackable. That squishy hardware between our ears? It runs software that can be updated.
A non-tail, however, believes that their personality is essentially fixed and unchanging (and for them it is, because belief begets behaviour).
You can certainly run default neural software - the one forged by your upbringing, parents, and the world around you. Some people feel trapped running this default mode, so they unwittingly install malware in the form of drugs, alcohol, sex, and other various forms of escapisms.
But of course, Tails take the third path: they install software that helps them become happy and fulfilled.
You can start too, by understanding the following:
____
Personality is not permanent. It is a mood calcified by repetition.
Imagine your personality traits as character stats. Perhaps your Strength is at an 8 because you were bullied as a kid and grew resilience as a coping mechanism. Or your Charisma is at a 10 because you learned how to radiate both warmth and confidence during university years. Perhaps your Discipline is at a 2 because you never developed models for behavioural consistency.
Thing is, there’s nothing stopping you from min-maxing your stats in one area or another. You can increase your XP in any arena by learning new skills, facing challenges, defeating enemies etc.
_____
Trauma is bad firmware: hard to change but not impossible.
Here’s a simple test to see if trauma is still haunting you: think about a traumatic event from your childhood. Do you still feel bodily pain from it? Does your mood dampen instantly? Do you feel like shutting down?
Think about it, you’re letting one event from more than a decade ago influence your mood NOW. That’s crazy, isn’t it? Of course, it’s not your fault, it’s a very natural human response and actually quite amazing. Your body is remembering past hurt to protect you from future hurt.
Here is the most powerful way to rewrite your trauma firmware.
This technique is called memory reconsolidation. Your childhood trauma most likely comes from the fact that an adult failed you in some way. So while in a meditative state, you must revisit your child-self, in that very moment. Look into your inner child’s eyes while they’re crying, as if you’re their parent, and reassure with full conviction that they are safe and loved. I also believe that the ability to self-parent is what makes someone an adult rather than an adolescent.
Tails play infinite games.
In life there are finite games and infinite games. Tails play the latter.
Finite games are all about winning or achieving a goal. Players play to chase an outcome. They are scarcity-based and revolve around competition and comparison. Here are some types of finite games:
Status Game → “I want to be admired by others.”
Achievement Game → “I want to be rich as fuck. What colour is your lambo?”
Intellectual Game → “I want to sound smarter than everyone else. In this moment I am euphoric”
Self-victimisation Game → “I want to feel superior because I’m oppressed.”
Finite games are played to win, but the wins often feel temporary and hollow.
Infinite games are all about evolving the authentic self. There is no endpoint - you play for the joy of playing. They are based on abundance and are self-reinforcing. Types of infinite games:
Creation Game → “I want to create authentic art.”
Love Game → “I want to grow a relationship that evolves with love.”
Impact Game → “I want to inspire myself and others.”
Mastery Game → “I want to improve at x skill - forever.”
Infinite games are crucial for a fulfilling and expansive life. The only litmus test you need for determining whether or not you’re an infinite game player is this question: “Am I evolving in this game, or trying to win this game?”
Tails understand that wealth =/= money.
People often conflate wealth and money. But they are not the same thing. Mixing up the two is a recipe for a hollow life. It’s the reason for the common celebrity trope “wait, I’m rich as fuck, but why am I not happy?”
Let me explain.
Think about someone you love. You love them SO MUCH. Could be your mother, father, lover, sibling, best friend, dog. Think about their laugh when you tell a joke. Think about the times you celebrated achievements together. Think about the times they were there for you at your lowest. Now would you accept $2 million to never see them again?
If you said no, that means you are already $2M rich. You already have $2M dollars worth of wealth in your life. Congrats, you’re a multimillionaire. If you said no (womp womp), don’t worry, I can still convince you you’re wealthy.
I’ll give you $10 million dollars. But only on one condition: tomorrow you have to wake up with a debilitating disease that leaves you bedridden and in immense pain for the rest of your life. Would you take the money?
Of course not. Essentially your health is a priceless form of wealth in your life.
To put it really simply:
Wealth = things you want.
Money = the abstraction of wealth so that you can store and trade wealth.
Now when you understand this, you’ll see that people sometimes work their butts off to earn money when they can skip the middle man and be wealthy instead.
Creating wealth is also an infinite game. You create wealth for yourself by living authentically in accordance to your own values, and for others by creating goods and services that people want. I’m not saying money is bad - no, money is amazing and buys you time and optionality. But tails understand that chasing money blindly in the absence of a grander mission in life will always be hollow and unfulfilling.
Tails thrive in paradox.
Tails are very happy to entertain paradoxes.
When you become a container for paradoxes, you can transcend them and view the system holistically.
It is also an indication that someone is high agency - and not simply running external societal scripts. Non-tails tend to fit their stereotypes squarely.
You can spot these kinds of high-agency paradoxical humans in society quite easily:
A beefy MMA fighter whose favourite book is the Unbearable Lightness of Being
A ballerina addicted to modifying her motorbike
A mathematician rejecting a $1M prize
The buddhist who uses blockchain to redistribute wealth
The ex-gang member who lectures on game theory at Yale
Being comfortable with contradictions is a prerequisite for being creative and open-minded. All creativity involves the synthesis of incongruent ideas. I talk about this more in my other blog How to Create Surrealist Ideas.
Tails follow a north star.
Tails have a North Star - a singular grand mission in life in which all their pursuits conform to. The reality distortion effect I talked about earlier is a consequence of this.
I’ll give you an example - Elon Musk. Ya I know, he’s a controversial figure and certified asshole, but he is such a clear example of a person following a singular North Star. His grand mission in life is to preserve the fragile flicker of human consciousness. All his entrepreneurial ventures work towards this singular mission:
Neuralink - triggered by a fear of AI-induced human extinction, a brain-computer interface allows us to potentially fuse to AI and steer its trajectory on an more intimate level. (I find this technology extremely terrifying for reasons I shall elaborate in another post).
Spacex - enables interplanetary travel for humans, diversification of habitation in case an extinction-level event wipes out humans on Earth.
Tesla - exploration and development of sustainable energy, leading to the increased long-term viability of human civilisation
Starlink - a global communication infrastructure to allow fast information flow of human consciousness.
Having a fuckton kids - not because he’s a horny bastard, a lot of these kids were conceived by surrogates/IVF. I guess when you’re the richest man in the world, you can just hack conventional biological processes. Anyway his concern over the population collapse and stupid people breeding has made him want to spread his genetic material, thereby preserving and extending human consciousness in some small way. I’m not making any moral claims on this, I’m just saying this is what he’s doing.
Tails are boring as fuck.
Tails are boring because they are consistent over a long period of time. They know that mastery is repetition and iteration, over and over and over and over again. If you feel like you are extreme in how consistent you are in your chosen art, you are on the right path.
Not only are Tails consistent in their art, they are consistent in life.
I always think of the Gustave Coubert quote:
“I must be orderly and regular in life, so that I may be violent and original in my work.”
Unless your North Star is to be a jack-of-all-trades itself, or to be entropy personified, unnecessarily pursuing dissonant hobbies or side quests only dilutes your gravity. It makes you more susceptible to simply follow the path of least resistance in life, statistically hurling you into a galton board middle bin.
Tails weaponise meditation
Will elucidate in another post: Why Meditation Makes you Dangerous (still under construction)
Tails create non-fungible things.
You can get a lot of success in life by replicating other people’s successes. Lyft and Olacabs copied Uber’s model to become successful ridesharing services (I can’t be bothered looking to see if either of these are still successful). When you replicate a method like this, you are thinking from analogy. You are adopting elements from one thing to create something adjacent that hopefully is still functional and useful.
However, there is a more powerful and extraordinary way to create. And that is to think from first principles in a way that has never been done before. This creates Non-Fungible Things - things that are so unique that they are in their own category. By the way, this is essentially what Thiel means when he says to create companies that are monopolies.
Non-Fungible Things, because they are unique and non-interchangeable, possess two incredible advantages:
First Mover Advantage - being the first of a category primes the network to associate dominance with the first mover. First movers also benefit from potential snowball effects from earlier implementation.
Minimal Competition - Success in a zero-sum game is of course much easier.
Bitcoin is a stunning example of a Non-Fungible Thing. It was completely unique when it was created in 2009. There was nothing else like it. Digital cash had existed prior, but none of those incarnations were blockchain-based and therefore suffered from the double-spend problem, and needed enforcement from centralised entities. Satoshi Nakamoto was certainly a tail.
Another Non-Fungible Thing? The internet. You get the point
Tails leverage leverage.
Tails are obsessed with ways to optimise their life through leverage. Honestly why tf would you work needlessly when you could work smarter? Why would you be content with getting ok results rather than super results, for the same amount of effort?
Leverage allows Tails to gain exponential benefits from linear effort. In other words, the benefits you reap are divorced from your efforts. For example, a hotdog seller on the street works without leverage - they will only get $1 per hotdog sold. On the other hand, a software engineer (if the job isn’t obsolete by the time you read this) works with leverage because they could spend just 1 day creating code that produces millions of dollars for their company.
Besides code, here are some other things that potentially scale:
Media - a quality video, image, or text excerpt has meme potential to spread and influence a mass amount of people
Capital - “it takes money to make money” that adage is true. If you have a large amount of capital you could invest it in certain markets and make compounding returns. With almost no effort involved.
Narrative - Humans are wired for stories. A piece of information told in a mythological way has compounded influence compared to cold facts.
Wisdom - if you operate on insights that no one else possesses, this confers massive advantage.
Actually the means in which you could leverage different areas of your life are HUGE. The difference for tails is their ability to be aware and actually execute on them.
Tails make asymmetric bets.
Asymmetric bets are bets where the downside is capped, and the upside is unlimited and potentially insane.
This is how venture capitalists and angel investors operate. One tiny investment in the right company could 100x their principle. Or influencers when they create videos for TikTok and Instagram. One small video could go insanely viral, and lead to new subscribers, brand deals, and media coverage.
To make successful asymmetric bets, you must be a contrarian in the right way. This is supremely important, because being a contrarian in the wrong way is worse than not being a contrarian at all.
Successful contrarians are essentially powerful prediction engines. They can spot trends before anyone else. They can then extrapolate the trajectories based on this pre-cognition. Think Michael Burry predicting the 2008 global financial crisis before the rest of wall street. Here’s a pertinent quote of his, taken from one of my fav books The Big Short:
“I must remain steadfast in the face of popular discontent, if that’s what the fundamentals tell me”.
Contrarians have to contradict everyone around them to pursue what they think is right, which is actually a gut-wrenching experience as we are fundamentally social creatures who value social harmony (excluding left-tail apathetists, nihilists, and sociopaths).
Tails reject the Efficient Market Hypothesis.
The Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) states that all available information has already been priced into markets. Thus, there is no way to predict how the market will move. This hypothesis essentially shits on technical analysis and fundamental analysis.
Taking this analogy into other areas in life, the Tail naturally rejects EMH. They are contrarians, remember? They understand that information arbitrage grants them advantages - all they have to do see the future before anyone else.
I remember when Uber first popped into existence. The idea of getting into a stranger’s car seemed ludicrous. Nowadays the angel investors that invested in early stage Uber are heralded as modern day Nostradamuses.
Tails increase their luck surface.
Tails aren’t lucky. Tails just have a large luck surface. There’s a big difference.
Luck is a low-agency concept. It assumes that we are just passive objects, waiting for the universe to bestow good fortune upon us by chance. In fact one of the most toxic ideologies I’ve ever subsumed was that of passive manifestation - the idea that we just have to live our dream life as if it’s already happened, and that we don’t have to work for our successes. There is no such thing as something for nothing - that is just a law of the universe, and honestly how it should be. People who expect to be rich and respected whilst creating nothing of value are entitled at best, and parasitic at worst.
There is a cure for the disease of passive manifestation - to instead act in ways that increase one’s luck surface. A person with a big luck surface has more surface area for luck to stick to. In other words, they create the conditions to attract more luck into their lives And because you can increase your luck surface, it makes you an active agent in this world, rather than a passive one.
Here are some ways to increase your luck surface:
Exposure. If your dream is to find your dream partner, you’re not gonna find them if you never leave your room. Actively talking to 100 different people dramatically increases your chance of a life-changing connection.
Skills. Every heard the quote “luck favours the prepared?” There have been so many times an opportunity has come my way, and I’ve just not had the skills to take up the opportunity.
Reputation. Your reputation really does proceed you and biases opportunities to your favour.
Volume, volume, volume. If you are an artist, your luck surface grows proportionally to the amount of artworks you create and broadcast out into the world. Whenever I create shitloads of art, I’m flooded with commissions, praise, and invitations to opportunities beyond my wildest dreams.
Opportunity diversification. If you diversify your outputs across different channels, it makes you anti-fragile in the event one channel collapses. For example, a cartoonist published in several different newspapers fears not being fired by one boss - they have many other avenues to post their comics.
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