Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets: 1 (Incerto)

The language is dense — unmistakably that of a true scientist — but it's rich with insight. Gems are scattered throughout the text, waiting to be discovered. I recommend reading it slowly, pausing often to reflect or highlight the subtle points you might otherwise miss. I’m already on a second pass, marking ideas I overlooked the first time. I’m especially glad the author didn’t simplify the language at an editor’s suggestion — that would’ve stripped the book of its distinctive voice and the unique pleasure of slow, thoughtful reading.

It completely changes the perspective in everything. Although some concepts take time to understand but it’s worth the waiting. The black swans in everything (Market, Career, life) exists so we can accept those instead of controlling it. Thank you

Not an easy read, but a peek into the depth of human machinery and the faults that lay around causing biases. Starting point for introspecting oneself into being a deep thinker, a good starting point.

Loved it. I could relate with the context even without any background in finance or economics. I am happy to have purchased it

Book-Level: Advanced The book brings "randomness" to the centre of the thought process. The idea that history is just one sample path randomly chosen from all the available sample paths at that point was explained well. Author, as expected, and seen on YouTube videos, does have a different attitude and tone on his writing, but I feel it suits him. Solon's explanation on who is luckiest was a good one too. There are several other characters and points which are explained well but probably I either couldn't recollect as I am writing this review OR I simply glanced them through. Nevertheless, this did make me fan of NNT, and worth a re-read.

Quality of pages not Penguin.

Liked the theme

The book does complete justice to all the reputation that it has. It is a phenomenal work and reading this has made me more curious about other books of the Incerto series. Taleb is known as an iconoclast and it becomes pretty clear why, after reading this. Everything he suggests is driven by logic and reason. He makes some stunning claims and explains them brilliantly. His thought process on the current brand of journalism is absolutely true. He ridicules people mercilessly and is also accepting of the fact that he himself is only a pawn of his emotions. Finally, I would say that this book must be read by everyone who wants to delve deep on the affects of uncertainty and randomness in our daily life. Taleb seems to the kind of writer whom you'll either respect and admire a lot or hate to your bones, I am glad that I find myself in the former category.

There is great value in reading NN Taleb, but it is not “face value”. If you expect insights which you can copy paste into your life to become a better person, better trader or whatever ... You will be disappointed. 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.

excellwnt

Fooled by Randomness made me rethink how much of “success” is really just luck. Taleb uses great real world examples, and the book is eye opening without being too technical. His tone can be a bit smug at times, but overall it’s a smart, engaging read that sticks with you.

Articolo perfetto, libro splendido. Dalla prima superiore gli studenti dovrebbero leggere e capire un libro di Nassim Taleb all'anno.

The main point of this book is uncertainty and its applications (or lack of it) on day to day life. Taleb explores this concept using finance as a starting point, but soon breaches into philosophy, statistics, psychology and evolutionary biology. A central idea is Hume’s problem of induction: it’s easier to disprove something than to prove it, all you need is a single occurrence where the basic premise is not true. In complex environments such as the modern world, betting on the “stability” of systems, where rules don’t change, can have catastrophic consequences, as the financial crises have shown. This asymmetry in the “burden of proof” will eventually evolve into Taleb’s concept of antifragility, that is, systems that actually thrive, rather than crumble, under uncertainty. When compared to Antifragile, Taleb’s third book, one can see the same ideas in a somewhat raw and less polished version. Fooled By Randomness is much more focused on economics and finance than Antifragile’s, which, in a way, turns it more palpable but provides a less “unified” theory on randomness, its impacts on daily life and how to survive and thrive under it. However, this book benefits from delving deeper than Antifragile’s in the topics that it discusses, which contributes to a better understanding of them. Additionally, by staying closer to the “source” of the discussion, Fooled by Randomness is more focused and has fewer ups and downs, in my view. It’s difficult for me to rank this book in Taleb’s corpus. My only certainty is that I’m much less certain about what I truly know and that my list of books to read and authors to explore has grown considerably.