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Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

by
Nassim Nicholas Taleb 

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

3.89
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Finally in paperback, here is the word-of-mouth sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world. This book is about luck: more precisely, about how we perceive luck in our personal and professional experiences. Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in which luck is mistaken for skill – the markets – Fooled by Randomness is an irre…moreFinally in paperback, here is the word-of-mouth sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world. This book is about luck: more precisely, about how we perceive luck in our personal and professional experiences. Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in which luck is mistaken for skill – the markets – Fooled by Randomness is an irreverent, iconoclastic, eye-opening, and endlessly entertaining multidisciplinary exploration of one of the least understood forces in all of our lives

Taleb deleted my comments, calling them nonsensical. So, I posted a new comment, telling others that Taleb apparently didn’t favor free speech, when his words were questioned. I knew there was a risk he would delete my comment, and he did. He also blocked me from posting further comments, with these word:

“Removed comments (and commenters) that are either nitpicking & diverting from the main argument or lacking in both rigor & elegance.”

Taleb’s mathematics are complicated, but his conclusions are not:

1. Small probabilities are incomputable, and the smaller they are, the harder they are to calculate.

2. Present models lead small probabilities to be underestimated.

3. These models cause the likelihood of horrible events with small probability to be even more underestimated.

4. Because of globalization and the fact that all markets and countries are interlinked, the economic cost of natural catastrophe rises in a nonlinear fashion.

5. If a person calculates the probability of a rare event and his life depends on that rare event not happening – for instance, a nuclear meltdown – he’s already underestimating the probability of that event.