Fooled by Randomness
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Taleb's first and most personal book: how traders, executives and the rest of us mistake luck for skill, ignore alternative histories, and are blind to survivorship bias. It is shorter and more readable than his later work, with the same arrogance and the same insight. The lesson transfers to any field where results are noisy.
Read it if…
you want to stop crediting yourself and others for outcomes that were luck.
Skip it if…
you want a structured argument; it is essayistic and digressive.
Three things you will actually use
- Judge decisions by process, because outcomes include luck.
- Beware the survivors; the failures are not in the room.
- Expect to be fooled; build in margin.
Do this first
For a recent success, write three alternative histories in which the same decision ended badly.
Our verdict
Sharp and readable; his most accessible.
Compare with other Mindset books
Nudge
Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein · Mindset
Influential and practical; environment design.
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Predictably Irrational
Dan Ariely · Mindset
Entertaining and instructive, with one caveat.
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