I’m currently reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness. Apart from the fact that he is an interesting fellow, part mathematical trader, part literary essayist, his book is based on a compelling premise: life is much more random than we think it is. When we look back at success in time, we can rationalize how we did it. For instance, someone may say he became rich through hard work. However, this can never be the sole reason, because there are many people who work hard but never become rich. It is easy to focus on the details while losing the general view.I like how he mentions too that mistakes can never be judged retrospectively with the information we know now, but rather with the data that was available up to the point in time the mistake was made.
I haven’t finished the book yet, but from what I read now I highly recommended if your interested in philosophy, trading or just intelligent thinking. Watch the above video for a bit more by Taleb himself. (Last year, he published The Black Swan which is also on my reading list.)
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Jan 7th, 2008 at 7:33 am
Interesting idea, this randomness. Indeed I see within myself this tendency to form a story in retrospect. The last weeks of 2007 I was reading a lot on goal-setting and ‘creating your future’. (I bit more sophisticated than that The Secret-stuff, though!)
Then I had this thrombosis in my arm, went to the hospital and saw even my plans for the first few days of the new year being rewritten by destiny, karma.
Taking karma into account, makes me more realistic, grounded and more humble.
Jan 7th, 2008 at 9:48 am
Just a note: karma and destiny are not the same. When equating the two, life is preconceived or determined by one’s past activities. However, karma is much more complex and determines our future only in as much as we let it. (even from bodily injuries, but I won’t go into that philosophically here). This doesn’t mean that karma will not fructify, but we still have the freedom to choose how to respond to karma.
The idea of randomness also got me thinking of Hindu philosophy and the points Taleb makes. It certainly is an idea worth exploring more. Perhaps even another post.