Each week, the Record (using a script in R) randomly selects a student at the College for our One in Two Thousand feature, excluding current Record board members. This week, Ben Liu ’27 spoke about his exercise routine, Nassim Taleb’s “baddie energy,” and the mystique of Alaska. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Arleny Flores (AF): You’re a math and computer science double major. What does your sleep schedule look like? 

Ben Liu (BL): I actually very much prioritize my sleep schedule. I cannot function if I don’t get at least eight hours of sleep. And I work out in the mornings, so I’m usually trying to wind down by 9:30, 10 p.m. and trying to be asleep by 11 p.m. so I can get up at 6, 6:30 a.m. For me, delaying my academics or my assignments for the next morning is less of a worry than getting my sleep. I think none of the all-nighters that I’ve pulled at Williams have been academics related. 

AF: Would you like to expand on that last part?

BL: Well, it would be like, “Oh, there’s a watch party for something, like some kind of sports event.” Or we just decide to stay up.

AF: I heard you like reading about economic history. Kiss, marry, kill: Nassim Taleb, Ray Dalio, and Michael Lewis. Explain your reasoning. 

BL: I would kiss Nassim Taleb, marry Michael Lewis, and kill Ray Dalio. 

I think Nassim Taleb has that “baddie energy,” in that he’s so arrogant and headstrong in his opinions. Like, a lot of people in academia really dislike him because he generally considers a lot of things in the real world to be beyond the grasp of lousy academics and PhDs in institutions. I think Dalio is very much academic and historically-based in his reasoning, but in some ways, he’s like a broken record. If you’re going to say the same thing for two decades, if it’s eventually going to happen, then that’s fine. But, if you’re wrong on the timing, you might as well just be wrong overall. And then Michael Lewis, his books are so fun. He’s really trying to bring the inside of Wall Street to the average reader and make it digestible and fun.

AF: You’re the co-captain of club skating. What is your most embarrassing skating memory?

BL: I learned to skate as a kid because I’m from Alaska. And funnily enough, it was because my grandma, when we first moved up when I was six, thought that it would be useful as a means of survival. You never know when you might see some black ice and you might slip and have to protect yourself. I skated for five or six years in elementary school and then quit in middle school, due to worry about getting injured. But probably my most embarrassing skating memory is falling several times during an ice skating program for a show. 

AF: As someone from Alaska, do you feel superior because it’s the biggest state?

BL: Ah. I think less so because it’s the biggest state and more because of its mystique. There are a lot of things that pictures and  stories cannot encapsulate. I had a few friends from Williams visit Alaska last summer, and they were like, “Wow, it’s so much more majestic than you’ve ever described it. You’re almost downplaying what it actually is.” Because, you know, I’ve just lived there for so long. The mountains are so grand. It’s awesome. 

AF: As a follow-up, do Alaskans feel left out because you’re not part of the continental United States?

BL: There’s a common saying in Alaska: When we refer to the other states, we call them “the lower 48.” Not only because they’re physically lower on the map, but, you know, the other states just can’t compare. 

AF: In an email exchange with me earlier today, you told me that you have a “crippling Twitter [X] addiction.” What was the last tweet that made you laugh? 

BL: It was looking at IPO [Initial Public Offering]. When a company goes public on the stock exchange, there’s an allocation of shares that they sell, and they get to decide who gets the allocation. And it’s usually highly sought after because if you get into the allocation it generally means you’ll make immediate money when it goes public. A lot of institutional investors didn’t get an allocation into the Figma IPO, but a bunch of individual people on Robinhood did. There was this tweet about it. It’s this photo of people gambling and everyone and their one share of Figma today. I thought it was funny. 

AF: You’re studying away at Harvard next semester. What fascinates you about Cambridge, Mass.?

BL: One of my top choices was MIT, and the Harvard program allows you to potentially take a course at MIT while you’re there. So I was like, “This is a good opportunity to fulfill that dream.”

AF: You frequently spend time in the Bay Area. Do you feel that the San Francisco hills prepared you well for the hiking scene at Williams?

BL: Yeah, this summer I lived in Corona Heights, which is, famously, one of the very hilly parts of San Francisco. After that, I think: “Oh, Pine Cobble, Greylock, that’s nothing.”

AF: You run and lift. Do you have any advice for rookies? 

I think just staying consistent. There’s going to be so many days where you don’t want to get out of bed. Those are the days where it matters most. Imagine yourself at night being like, “Oh, I should have gone in the morning,” and regretting it. Ask yourself:  What feels worse, you in the moment right now, or the regret later?

AF: Final question: You’re interested in discretionary trading and investing. What is that, and how did you realize it was one of your passions?

BL: Traditionally, a hedge fund might employ automated strategies where predetermined algorithms execute logic to place trades. Whereas discretionary trading might involve some set of rules, but also allows the embedding of situational awareness or differences in current opportunities. For example, when a bunch of people on Reddit took to buying meme stocks, that had never happened before. How do you react? How do you model that in an algorithm wherein that’s never happened before? The idea is, you can, at your discretion, act in different ways based on the situation. 

I was always interested and good at video games as a kid. And I think there’s a lot of analogous features between what I do and playing those games. I think the easiest way to describe it would be that it’s like trying to put together a puzzle, but you don’t know what it looks like beforehand. As the pieces get put in place, your job is basically to see the full picture before everyone else. So, I think the idea of solving puzzles is what really intrigues me about it.