The core of the book is about luck that we understand as skill or “randomness disguised as non-randomness (that is determinism).” Trust me, you’d rather know you are ignorant. There is a big distinction between the two. Most decisions are not risk-based, they are uncertainty-based and you either know you are ignorant or you have no idea you are ignorant.

In decisions under uncertainty, I discussed how risk and uncertainty are different things, which creates two types of ignorance. “ Outside of textbooks and casinos, probability almost never presents itself as a mathematical problem” which is fascinating given how we tend to solve problems. Mother nature does not tell you how many holes there are on the roulette table, nor does she deliver problems in a textbook way (in the real world one has to guess the problem more than the solution). Outside of textbooks and casinos, probability almost never presents itself as a mathematical problem or a brain teaser. Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance. In this book probability is principally a branch of applied skepticism, not an engineering discipline. Probabilityįooled by Randomness is about probability, not in a mathematical way but as skepticism. It certainly takes bravery to remain skeptical it takes inordinate courage to introspect, to confront oneself, to accept one’s limitations- scientists are seeing more and more evidence that we are specifically designed by mother nature to fool ourselves. Writing on Montaigne as the role model for the modern thinker, Taleb also addresses his courage: I would listen to someone’s discussion of his own past realizing that much of what he was saying was just backfit explanations concocted ex post by his deluded mind.

It is as simple as that: Past events will always look less random than they were (it is called the hindsight bias). It is as if there were two planets: the one in which we actually live and the one, considerably more deterministic, on which people are convinced we live. Part of the argument that Fooled by Randomness presents is that when we look back at things that have happened we see them as less random than they actually were. Interestingly, Fooled by Randomness contains semi-explored gems of the ideas that would later go on to become the best-selling books The Black Swan and Antifragile. This is the first popular book he wrote, the book that helped propel him into an intellectual celebrity. I loved Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Taleb.

Fool of randomness