Fooled by Randomness~ a review

Many non-fiction books are opinion pieces masquerading as non-fiction.

The book "Fooled by randomness" By Nassim Taleb is one such book. But the difference between this and the others of this kind is the fact that the author is well aware of this fact and lets you know this throughout the book.

The central thesis of this book is that we do not account for luck or chance or randomness is our lives (and that the human mind in not really capable of it either!).

Many of us would attribute our successes and/ or fortunes to our skill and our failures and/or misfortunes to our bad luck. Taleb simply contends this. According to him both our successes and failures could be attributed to luck. We should try to incorporate some uncertainty in our lives, as he says cheekily suggests by varying your schedule by a few minutes everyday! He ends the book (before the addendum and a huge section of notes and further reading) "The only article Lady Fortuna has no control over is your behaviour."

Although this central theme is so thought provoking and insightful, there is one line in the middle of the text that is far more useful. I paraphrase this below:

"We do not need grandiose lectures. We need tips and tricks that work."

Taleb rightly notes that most people know what they need to do, but do not know how to get around to doing the thing (I admit I fall smack in the middle of category!). We do not need opinions of people telling us what we should be doing. It would be better to tell how to start and get to doing that is more important. For this, we need not try to iron out all of our flaws. Instead it is better to get around them! For example, I struggle to get up early in the morning. So instead of watching some random things over the internet (which provide nothing of value to me currently) and agonising that I was unable to get up early in the morning, it is better to write this article or to read a book! this was what I was planning to do in the morning any way!

Unfortunately, I do not remember the tricks Taleb suggests to counter randomness. Taleb by profession is a quant (quantitative analyst), so the tips he does give are related to finance. Nevertheless, the book is a good read filled with many anecdotes on how people are fooled by randomness.

Now, I will go off to read some probability theory!