FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

this book is the synthesis of, on one hand, th no-nonsense practitioner of uncertainty who spent his professional life trying to resist being fooled by randomness and trick the emotions associated with probabilistic outcomes and, on the other, the aesthetically obsessed, literature-loving human being willing to be fooled by any form of nonsense that is polished, refined, original, and tasteful. Iam not capable of avoiding being the fool of randomness;what I can do is confine it to where it brings some aesthetic gratification. This comes straight from the gut; it is a personal essay primarily discussing its author’s thoughts, struggles, and observations connected to the practice of risk taking, not exactly a treatise, and certainly, god forbid, not a piece of scientific reporting. It was written for fun and it aims to be read (principally) for, and with, pleasure. Much has been written about our biases (acquired or genetic) in dealing with randomness over the past decade.