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

Well, you know, the book that has forever changed my life is Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book, Fooled by Randomness. I read it before I started SunEdison a long time ago. And it reminds me today that like all the things that people take credit for, a lot of it was luck. And it's important to figure out luck versus, you know, what you actually did.

It's much more costly for someone to not detect a pattern That's Nassim Taleb, the author of Fooled by Randomness and the Black Swan

It's much more costly for someone to not detect a pattern.

It's much costlier for us as a race to make the mistake of not seeing a leopard than have the illusion of pattern and imagining a leopard when there is none.

I remember in a fluid by randomness, Taleb talks about watching all of like the hormones of someone who just lost a lot of money like pour out and how pale they look. Right. He had a specific comment about that.

Like, for example, people in journalism, and this I wrote about in Fooled by Randomness, you should have newspapers, or they say lengths of newspapers. Now we don't have newspapers, but you understand what I mean. They should be on days like the stock market crash or on the last couple of weeks, newspapers should be that big. And the rest of the time should be half a page.

if you haven't read the black swan or antifragil or fool by randomness you absolutely should.

have you read Fooled by Randomness I have not I have heard but what I end up doing run like I'm the opposite of some people I end up reading a book and then I really want to now study it and make sure I know every now and then I'll read something just to go can need to get away and I read and I but I have it's interesting I had to tell my brain this is a book that I'm not taking notes this is a book I'm just going to digest right and enjoy and it's going to take me away and I'm sure I'm going to remember a nugget here there and then there's some books that I go okay I want someone recommended this one just like the one you just did and go okay how do I need to read that when I need to study it and now now review it and then review it again so it my man my wife Kara can like read if she gets everything right yes you need four or five books a week if she gets into it and she can give me the cliff notes and then passes but she passes books to me mine stack up and it would take me a lifetime to read so it took me two summers I just finished this summer reading for the first time because I didn't read it young Atlas shrugged yeah so I mean I mean it's your thousand something pages into a pretty what did you think you know what well this is a controversial right you know what I thought and I thought she was brilliant it was very interesting sociology being from Russia yeah to now probably United States and some of those whether you are all in on her ideology or not what was interesting is I thought she was brilliant into right getting her ideology across and like all ideologies I'm never going to fall on the sword for all of it right but what I try to do in books like that that are right deep and meaningful is okay if I were all in these are the positives if I were all against these are the negatives kind of look at those and see in reality right which ones blended together you know or working or not working so like everything right there's there's probably some thumbs up parts in it and there's maybe some thumbs down parts like I don't know if that could really work but no it's it's what I think about Atlas shrugged is it's very interesting and it's impressive that she was able to make it interesting yet but it's it's also at my I read it when I was 19 or 20 and I think a lot of young men read it at that age and it feels good then as you get older I think you go this is kind of childish like you're like oh you don't appreciate me and my talents you don't love me for all my contributions to society so I'm going to take my ball and I'm going to go to my gulch you know in the middle of wherever and there only around my fellow brilliant people will I be appreciated I my thing is like what would the world look like if people did that it would be horrible so that my my ultimate takeaway on on Atlas shrugged is that it's it's immature does that make sense yes definitely I mean there's we could talk all day you know on that right but going back to the technique of the book I started it when when the quarantine kind of hit and I'm like there's no better time to read if I'm going to read Atlas shrugged than maybe now yeah so I started it last summer I'm a slow reader and this is dense and and then I came back and finished it this summer but what was fascinating is for her to set up all those characters and it I guess it was interesting enough for me to stay with it but it but then in the second half when she when it really went to rolling and there was action and now the people are preaching the ideology and you're figuring it all out you're like how did I get through that first part where she like like I really know Dagny now I mean I feel like Dagny's my sister like I know her and but it took a long time to get to know her which I don't know if you could pull off a book that dense and let's call it modern Gen Z millennial that's right ADD times I that's what I kept going back to could this book be successful today I now know it's it's an you're an author you could extraordinarily difficult and you think it's the book is basically like a series of like 20 page speeches it's like character 20 page page 20 page 20 and you're like when you finish it you're like this shouldn't have worked but somehow it did so artistically it's a feat of genius philosophically it's sort of like the joke about an iron Rand is that her thing is about the virtue of selfishness right I think it's who said do you really find that people have trouble with that you know like if you ever met anyone who wasn't selfish enough like and I think I think that's where it falls short is it's sort of addressing a problem that doesn't actually exist no doubt less this is amazing I can't wait to see you again soon and and yeah we'll do this again looking looking forward to I enjoyed it talk soon talk soon Hey it's Ryan if you want to take your study of stoicism to the next level I want to invite you to join us over at daily stoic life we have 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