
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets: Incerto, Book 1
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Fooled by Randomness is a stand-alone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are The Black Swan, Antifragile, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes.
Fooled by Randomness is the word-of-mouth sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world. Nassim Nicholas Taleb - veteran trader, renowned risk expert, polymathic scholar, erudite raconteur, and New York Times best-selling author of The Black Swan - has penned a modern classic that turns on its head what we believe about luck and skill.
This book is about luck - or more precisely, about how we perceive and deal with luck in life and business. Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in which luck is mistaken for skill - the world of trading - Fooled by Randomness provides captivating insight into one of the least understood factors in all our lives. Presented in an entertaining narrative style, the author tackles major intellectual issues related to the underestimation of the influence of happenstance on our lives.
The book is populated with an array of characters, some of whom have grasped, in their own way, the significance of chance: the baseball legend Yogi Berra; the philosopher of knowledge Karl Popper; the ancient world’s wisest man, Solon; the modern financier George Soros; and the Greek voyager Odysseus. We also meet the fictional Nero, who seems to understand the role of randomness in his professional life but falls victim to his own superstitious foolishness.
However, the most recognizable character of all remains unnamed - the lucky fool who happens to be in the right place at the right time - he embodies the “survival of the least fit”. Such individuals attract devoted followers who believe in their guru’s insights and methods. But no one can replicate what is obtained by chance.
Are we capable of distinguishing the fortunate charlatan from the genuine visionary? Must we always try to uncover nonexistent messages in random events? It may be impossible to guard ourselves against the vagaries of the goddess Fortuna, but after listening to Fooled by Randomness, we can be a little better prepared.
Includes bonus pdf of tables and figures.
Praise for Fooled by Randomness:
Named by Fortune One of the Smartest Books of All Time
A Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year
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- Durée8 heures et 57 minutes
- Date de sortie sur audible8 janvier 2019
- LangueAnglais
- ASINB07KRNS99Y
- VersionVersion intégrale
- Type de programmeLivre audio
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Détails sur le produit
Durée | 8 heures et 57 minutes |
---|---|
Auteur | Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
Narrateur | Joe Ochman |
Date de publication sur Audible.fr | 08 janvier 2019 |
Éditeur | Random House Audio |
Type de programme | Livre audio |
Version | Version intégrale |
Langue | Anglais |
ASIN | B07KRNS99Y |
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Fooled by Randomness is an invitation to reason, to think beyond the appearances, it contains various anecdotes from the life of NN Taleb, as well as hitorical ones. These are meant to trigger thought on the concepts which are laid in the book, and make you ponder on how randomness affects your life and the ones surrounding you.
It is seemingly easy to read, but if you want to get the real value out of it you will need to pause, dig and take the extra mile of thought. NN Taleb points to the source, but it is up to you to take the additional steps to drink from it.
Satisfait de l'achat et de l'expédition
Ce livre offre des exemples aussi parlants que drôles, de résultats indigestes sous leur forme mathématique. On apprécie ou pas le ton employé, mais pour ce qui est du traitement du sujet il est difficile de faire mieux. Ce livre est un exemple de pluridisciplinarité : maths, psychologie, économies, philosophie (épistémologie) et ironie y sont magistralement discutés et illustrés.
Meilleurs commentaires provenant d’autres pays

In another instance, Nassim criticises an interviewer for pointing out to an expert that his ideas if followed would have caused a loss. Nassim doesn't explain why this objection is invalid.
On the plus side, there are some interesting ideas here:
- We're good at understanding even bets, where there's a 50% chance in your favor, not skewed bets, where the chance is more on one side.
- A 20% chance of making 1 crore is not the same as a 10% chance of making 2 crores, though both have the same expected value of 20 lac. Expected value is not the only factor in analysing bets.
- The human mind is poor at understanding probabilistic thinking, because it's counter-intuitive.
- When Nassim was asked on one instance whether he thinks the market will go up or down, he said that it's likely to go up but he bet that it went down. Why? Because if it goes up, it goes up only a little, but if it goes down, it's expected to go down a lot, so the expected value is negative.
- The more often you check your portfolio, the more likely you'll find dips, which will make you feel bad. A negative event isn't counter-balanced by a positive event — it requires roughly two positive events to counter-balance it. So Nassim, aware of his own irrational mind, checks his portfolio rarely. And so should we.
- Randomness plays a big part in outcomes, and most people take credit for good luck but blame bad luck on things beyond their control. Plus there's so much ego involved.
- A family earning half a million dollars a year and staying in fashionable Park Avenue in New York, where they're the poorest in their apartment building, will be happier if they move to a middle-class area, where people will look up to, not down at, them.
- A person who repeatedly takes bets and is proven right for a decade can still be wrong, and gives us the example of a trader who was right for two decades, and then went bankrupt. If you bet that rare things won't happen, it may take a decade or two for luck to catch up with you.
- Everyone assumes rare things won't happen, while Nassim bets that they will. Nassim loses money every day for years, and finally earns a lot to make up for all the losses, though it's emotionally draining to see money go out every day. Nassim knows his worst-case scenario, while others don't.
- Wall St banks have bad incentives and will never behave properly. Bad behavior is ignored as long as it produces a profit.
- "Stochastic" means a process consisting of a sequence of random events. Not one event.
- Monte Carlo techniques are computer programs that simulate thousands of scenarios, all random, and give you a conclusion like: 20% of the time, you go bankrupt. 30% of the time, you make a million dollars. The rest of the time, you earn a modest return of 10-20% on your investment. This is a much better way of analysing things than a single number, like: what is the probability that this investment technique produces a 15% profit?
- Monte Carlo techniques are the only option when the equations to model things are too complex. Monte Carlo is brute force, and works.
- Survivorship bias means that the average fund manager has a high return because the rest are out of business. If you count them, the average return is low.
- Nassim is an intellectual and prefers thinking to working.

Avoid this empty piece of fluff and go read "thinking fast and slow".

This was my first Nassim Taleb book I've read, so I can't compare to his two main books Anti-fragile & The Black Swan, although I will be reading those next.

"The Black Swan" taught me about something I sort of intuitively knew about, but couldn't quite articulate, and doubted myself when I tried: the importance of very unlikely, but very costly risks ("'black swan' events"). But this earlier work seems a better place to start. While Taleb writes well, it's not an easy read. He keeps saying that people misrepresent him for a reason: it's very easy to do. The digested NN Taleb is that success is *partly* down to luck (and the "*partly*" gets omitted by a lot of people). This isn't the place to summarise why he thinks that. Read the damn book.
Coda: this book covered a lot of material that was in my undergraduate degree and quite a lot that should have been. If you're an undergraduate in *any* of the sciences, this book will at the least, do you no harm, and may come in useful at some unexpected moment. If you've got a degree, you should have read this book, so if you haven't, make good that omission now. If you have the sense not to have a degree, well, this book is for you too.

Is it only for numberphiles? No, it probably is too basic for the ‘initiated’; even though they still might enjoy the examples and life stories.
Everything is well explained in a simple manner; probably also because Taleb is not as brilliant as he thinks.
The outcome is a practical theory, exciting, and filled with anecdotes of an unusual character.
Lets put it this way, this book makes a dry theory entertaining and accessible to everyone. That should be applauded.