Summary of : Fooled By Randomness

Randomness is our everyday thing; the new era brings a lot of excitement derived from the technology itself.

“Fooled by Randomness” is one of those books, which concisely illustrate the point of success. In this case, that point is called randomness. This book summary will support your business ideas if you understand- How random events affect your company (positively or negatively).

Taleb is an author of some of the best books, can say he has written several masterpieces such as Antifragile, the black swan, the bed of Procrustes including today’s book summary Fooled by randomness.

Chapter 1 : Life isn’t fair, which makes the rewards of continued efforts excessively big

We think that life is linear means sequential but that’s not the actual fact. Here author says that many systems we move and live works in linear fashion mean in sequential form, usually in one line, with every day of your work you move closer to your promotion, when you go to school you move closer to graduation, with every savings you do, you move closer to your retirement same lifestyle, and so on.

But life is not linear because we can’t be sure that we will end with the same result the way we have started. Earlier everyone used button mobile but now android mobile replaced it. Hence it’s not sure that the way things started will end up the same way.

We people can get disproportionate size of rewards from an ongoing process. But people fail to see the progress they can get through more hard work and efforts hence they give up before seeing that progress.

Chapter 2 : Without our irrational emotions we often couldn’t make decisions at all, we need them

Not every decisions or choice can be easy, some choice can be indifferent, like there can be some choices which outcome will neither makes us feel better nor able to make us feel worse.

Hence author here want us to understand that sometimes some decisions choices needs irrationality, always by being rational we can’t be able to make proper choices. Because there can be some situations when its impossible for us to be rational and at such situation irrationality and randomness will help us will help us to clear our mind. Example, Long ago Rakesh Jhunjunwala invested in United Breweries with irrational decision but he withdrew his stake before the stock made rally.

The author also says that our emotions can influence us and can make us think irrational, but it is we who needs to use our logic and proper reasons, we people need to understand where irrational reasoning is required and where rational reasoning must be used.

Chapter 3 : You can use stoicism to deal with the bad kind of randomness and enjoy it when it’s harmles

Author says we people need to use randomness in a better way so that it can improve our lives in better way. When harmful kind of randomness hit our doors then we can use stoic attitude or stoicism, we should deal with harmful randomness with elegance, we should never self-pity, we should never blame others or shouldn’t complain and must prepare our self mentally to take all responsibility on our hands.

This book contains valuable lessons and chapters and also has various examples. This article covers only some part in summarized form.

Liked this article? Don't forget to share!

Favorite Quotes

1. Love without sacrifice is like theft.

2. Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking.

3. Half of the people lie with their lips; the other half with their tears.

4. Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost.

5. What I learned on my own I still remember.