{"id":555,"date":"2011-09-13T20:28:24","date_gmt":"2011-09-14T01:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/?p=555"},"modified":"2011-09-13T20:32:02","modified_gmt":"2011-09-14T01:32:02","slug":"thoughts-on-fooled-by-randomness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/thoughts-on-fooled-by-randomness\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on “Fooled by Randomness”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently finished reading Fooled by Randomness<\/em><\/a>, the second book I’ve read by Nassim Taleb. It was quite similar to (it actually predates) his other book The Black Swan<\/em><\/a>, and it was written in a similarly amusing, “I know better than you” style that would be annoying if he were, in fact, correct much of the time.<\/p>\n

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This book doesn’t focus exclusively on black swan events, but talks more about human psychology and why we tend to misinterpret events and models of the world. To that degree, the descriptions of errors of heuristics is more useful than the Black Swan, which I found talked well about the phenomenon without doing much to tell people how to take advantage of it. Convincing people to disabuse themselves of their “common sense”, which Taleb points out is a result of countless generations of evolution, is another matter entirely. I can see how his method could be less than convincing, at least in the short term.<\/p>\n

The book has a very general map of where it wants to go and sometimes that isn’t always clear to the reader, but it is definitely worth the journey. It won’t, however, make you feel better about our current political and economic situation: it’s clear that the financial elites are still, for the most part, the same people who think that “Ten sigma” events simply can’t happen. You know, like the Asian financial crisis, LTCM, 9\/11, the current meltdown… As Upton Sinclair said, however, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” and it is just as true today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently finished reading Fooled by Randomness, the second book I’ve read by Nassim Taleb. It was quite similar to (it actually predates) his other book The Black Swan, and it was written in a similarly amusing, “I know better than you” style that would be annoying if he were, in fact, correct much of… Continue reading Thoughts on “Fooled by Randomness”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t