Seems the paper NNT published the other day Spurious Tail.pdf is causing quite a stir. A lot of it [Time, CNBC, WSJ] is just so much financial news filler, but certainly a Felix Salmon post deserves our attention. 

The professions you really want to avoid, after reading Taleb’s paper, are not financial but rather creative. Where do you find millions of people all trying to succeed against the odds? Just look at how many bands there are, how many aspiring novelists, how many struggling artists. Nearly all of them think that if they create something great, that will improve their chances of success in their field. But given the sheer number of people they’re competing against, and given the fact that the number of breakout stars in each field is shrinking rather than growing, the fact is that just about everybody with massive success will have got there by sheer luck.

via The secret to success in the arts | Felix Salmon.
HatTip to Dave Lull who also points out a comment on the post from NNT!

Nassim says:
August 15, 2012 at 9:33 pm   
Thanks Felix,
I agree with everything but one thing to point out: the finance industry looks less a winner-take-all because of the large survivorship bias.
My idea is mostly about the *future* spurious tail: there are so many track records to compete with.