Fooled by Randomness

The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

De: Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Narrado por: Sean Pratt

This audiobook is about luck, or more precisely, how we perceive and deal with luck in life and business. It is already a landmark work and its title has entered our vocabulary. In its second edition, Fooled by Randomness is now a cornerstone for anyone interested in random outcomes.

Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in which luck is mistaken for skill, the world of trading, this audiobook is a captivating insight into one of the least understood factors of all our lives. In an entertaining narrative style, the author succeeds in tackling three major intellectual issues: the problem of induction, the survivorship biases, and our genetic unfitness to the modern word. Taleb uses stories and anecdotes to illustrate our overestimation of causality and the heuristics that make us view the world as far more explainable than it actually is.

The audiobook is populated with an array of characters, some of whom have grasped, in their own way, the significance of chance: Yogi Berra, the baseball legend; Karl Popper, the philosopher of knowledge; Solon, the ancient world's wisest man; the modern financier George Soros; and the Greek voyager Ulysses. We also meet the fictional Nero, who seems to understand the role of randomness in his professional life, but who also falls victim to his own superstitious foolishness.

But the most recognizable character remains unnamed, the lucky fool in the right place at the right time - the embodiment of 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 through chance.

It may be impossible to guard against the vagaries of the Goddess Fortuna, but after listening to Fooled by Randomness we can be a little better prepared.

©2004 Nassim Nicholas Taleb; (P)2008 Gildan Media Corp

Reseñas de la Crítica

"[Taleb is] Wall Street's principal dissident....[ Fooled by Randomness] is to conventional Wall Street wisdom approximately what Martin Luther's ninety-nine theses were to the Catholic Church." (Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker)
"An articulate, wise, and humorous meditation on the nature of success and failure that anyone who wants a little more of the former would do well to consider." (Amazon.com)

Pass on this one and read The Black Swan

Taleb's master work and must read is The Black Swan (not the movie) and it's amazing. This is a sparse shadow of that book.

Taleb Fooled by his Own Randomness

As someone who reads a lot of books on this and other subjects, I found this to be a waste of time and not deserving of the praise it received.

At first I thought I could appreciate its appeal to those not well versed in the rhetoric of randomness and the inherently faulty mechanisms of human decision making but not all the ideas expressed in the book are accurate and thoroughly vetted, resulting in a lot of misleading conclusions.

As an aside, I personally didn’t enjoy the forced bouts of arrogant condescension towards an unnecessary broad range of professionals. Taleb's Black Swan is a much better read and probabaly his best work (from what I've read)

If you want someone with true mastery to comprehensively guide you through better decision making, read Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow.

Very good and worthy book

The narrator is good, does good work and comes across a bit elitist, a bit like the writer intended.

A person with no background in stats will like the whole book, the stats and operations research person will think the book gets weaker as you reach the end. Markets and social phenomenon are covered early. The content on risk management is great. The content on options strategy is also great.

There after, the book is covering the nuances of contentment, personal quirks, and reactions to loss.

The personal quirks, as an example, are doctors that smoke, even as they know the risks of lung cancer. Interesting, but yawn, we all know this.

In summary, the book is 5-stars in the beginning, 4-stars in the middle, and 3-stars to end. The simple average is 4-stars.

Excellent

Excellent ideas and articulation throughout the book. Nassim has made me a follower of this creations.

Great book. Taleb’s best

Great book on on logic and reason and how to accurately assess events that appear to be random. I would recommend this as everyone’s first Nassim Taleb book. And every practitioner of logic should read all 5