Fooled By Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

“We are still very close to our ancestors who roamed the savannah. The formation of our beliefs is fraught with superstitions—even today.”

This passage establishes the evolutionary roots of one of the main themes of the book, Human Perceptions of Cause and Effect. Taleb argues that while the complexity of the modern world evolves at a rapid pace, our ability to effectively process this complexity has not evolved at the same pace. Therefore, humans operate with a primeval perception of the relationship between cause and effect.

“The growth in available information has been exceeded only by the expansion of noise.”

The volume of information people are presented with in the modern world far exceeds our brains’ ability to process. Throughout the book, Taleb highlights ways the signal is lost in the noise and provides his own strategies for making the distinction in a saturated information environment.

“Solon was wise enough to get the following point; that which came with the help of luck could be taken away by luck (and often rapidly and unexpectedly at that). The flipside, which deserves to be considered as well (in fact it is even more of our concern), is that things that come with little help from luck are more resistant to randomness.”

Taleb uses a parable to frame the first part of the book. The quote speaks to one of the book’s themes: the difference between skill and luck. People often misattribute their success to skill when it was actually due to luck, leaving them vulnerable to future reversals of fortune. Taleb provides a comparative example of this distinction in Chapter 1 when he discusses Nero Tulip and John.