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Fooled by Randomness
- The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Series: Incerto
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Categories: Money & Finance, Investing & Trading
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Summary
Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in which luck is mistaken for skill, the world of trading, this audiobook is a captivating insight into one of the least understood factors of all our lives. In an entertaining narrative style, the author succeeds in tackling three major intellectual issues: the problem of induction, the survivorship biases, and our genetic unfitness to the modern word. Taleb uses stories and anecdotes to illustrate our overestimation of causality and the heuristics that make us view the world as far more explainable than it actually is.
The audiobook is populated with an array of characters, some of whom have grasped, in their own way, the significance of chance: Yogi Berra, the baseball legend; Karl Popper, the philosopher of knowledge; Solon, the ancient world's wisest man; the modern financier George Soros; and the Greek voyager Ulysses. We also meet the fictional Nero, who seems to understand the role of randomness in his professional life, but who also falls victim to his own superstitious foolishness.
But the most recognizable character remains unnamed, the lucky fool in the right place at the right time - the embodiment of the "Survival of the Least Fit". Such individuals attract devoted followers who believe in their guru's insights and methods. But no one can replicate what is obtained through chance.
It may be impossible to guard against the vagaries of the Goddess Fortuna, but after listening to Fooled by Randomness we can be a little better prepared.
Critic reviews
"An articulate, wise, and humorous meditation on the nature of success and failure that anyone who wants a little more of the former would do well to consider." (Amazon.com)
What listeners say about Fooled by Randomness
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Ben Stubbens
- 21-02-17
Self righteous rambling
While the book may read well this unfortunately doesn't translate into a good audiobook. It comes across as very self righteous as he sneers at the mere mortals who don't appreciate randomness. Furthermore this book lacks any kind of structure and seems to be a collection of thoughts as they've come into the author's head. I was very disappointed
8 people found this helpful
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- Phil
- 31-12-18
Excellent book, but patience is required
This book (and much of Taleb’s writing) attract an unnecessary amount of negative backlash. Yes, his books can often steer into being the ramblings of someone socially awkward, with a chip on their shoulder - but don’t let this distraction put you off reading this book.
I found the narration to be okay - though somewhat dry. The editing of this book is also bizarre (it feels like there has been no editing), quite often themes are mentioned out of nowhere, not expanded upon, and then the subject will change before you understand why.
To enjoy Taleb’s style of writing, you should treat it the same as having a long conversation with a friend after a few too many drinks.
3 people found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 10-01-20
The worst book I have ever had
What I have learned from this book:
1) To aviod unfair trails in courts they should be based on probability not the evidence.
2) The author hates journalists
3) All psychologists and neuroscientists are wrong
4) Research can be based on hypothesis not the evidence
5) and the best one
RUSSIAN LAW IS COMPLICATED AND PROOF OF THAT ACCORDING TO THE AUTHOR? IT IS DIFFICULT TO SPEAK WITH RUSSIAN LAWYERS DUE TO THEIR FOREIGN ACCENT AND VODKA SMELLING BREATHS!!! (the author didn't clariffy if that also applies if the conversation is in their native Russian)
2 people found this helpful
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- Trung
- 27-11-19
Pseudo intellectualism
Nassim attempts to criticise other people in his line of work for “scientism” but he himself advocates his idea through this very method. The book at its highest contains high school level knowledge and at its lowest reads like the ranting of a bitter employee jealous that his coworkers are getting ahead of him and waiting for them to fall.
There is very little “rigor” that the author espoused in this book aside from an attempt to cherry pick events from unrelated topics to sell his brand of pseudoscience.
2 people found this helpful
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- Abdulla
- 17-02-20
Not Much Useful for Value Investors
The only thing that could be useful in this book for value investors is its emphasis of trying to estimate the probability of future (independent of the past) expectations of the prospective security.
In my opinion, it's a waste of time and money to buy this book for value investors. There are much better books, such as Invest Like a Guru, that deliver high-quality content, both theoretical and practical.
1 person found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 21-07-19
Oh come on.
Nothing new. Some interesting perspectives, but having listened to it, I feel I’ve been conned. One great truth poorly illustrated.
1 person found this helpful
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- Ritam
- 09-09-18
outstanding!
outstanding book. great narration. loved each idea. the book is an eye opener for everyone.
1 person found this helpful
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- R Morris
- 24-02-21
Blinded by Randomness
I'll try and restrain myself best I can. This guy has serious delusions of eloquence and should not be an author. I am surprised that the excellent narrator actually managed to get through the book without vomiting from the author's gross verbosity. See, I can also use smart sounding needlessly lengthy sentences to just basically say 'this book was terrible'. Notice how I restrained from using a curse word because I have some sort of appreciation of my potential audience reading this review.... unlike the author's appreciation for his audience. Sadly the poor review is not only for the incoherency of the author but also the content he is trying to convey. I bought this book to explore the other side of the argument for trading through technical analysis. This book has only served to strengthen my belief in that method of trading. He is utterly blinded by his theory of randomness which he completely fails to portray.
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- Kamil Roman
- 20-02-21
Paradigm shift, not only for investors
We tend to evaluate many of our life decisions in terms of their outcome. The book's tenet is that the specific outcome is much more due to chance and good or bad luck than to our wisdom, shrewdness or lack thereof. I loved the fragment about great people taking risks - in each great story there is usually some great risk taken. But we hear only of those Napoleons, Caesars or Market Wizards, whom the fortune smiled to and not of those anonymous thousands or millions for whom the realization of the probability function was not that advantagous.
The book is written in a shrewd, intelligent, sometimes also very personal and pretentious manner which at least for me made it fun to listen to.
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- Amazon Customer
- 15-11-20
Excellent but the hype is a bit much.
Such a massively acclaimed book, and it is very good, but I suppose it didn't quite meet its potentially unmeetable expectations.
Nevertheless, there is a core set of important learnings gained from going through the book.
Very unique style. Feels disjointed and random until something suddenly clicks. Nice change of pace.
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- Wade T. Brooks
- 25-06-12
Pass on this one and read The Black Swan
Taleb's master work and must read is The Black Swan (not the movie) and it's amazing. This is a sparse shadow of that book.
39 people found this helpful
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- Igor
- 28-03-19
useless rant
general observation of life on level of teenager mindset. what was the point to state trivial baseless assumptions? pointless blablabla
6 people found this helpful
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- William
- 02-03-19
an author high on his own ego.
The narration is excellent but the book itself is poor. The author seems to think that his own original thoughts are superior to published research anywhere the argument is remotely possible. The only thing more annoying in reading such is the faux humility he attempts to dress it in while he argues that he should not be responsible for covering conventional literature, and simultaneously dismissing it
6 people found this helpful
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- Kazuhiko
- 10-02-13
Fun to listen to
Many reviews of this book point out that the author is arrogant, and I agree, but
this arrogance probably comes from his insecurity of, after all, still being in the
financial industry that he seems to despise. He cannot get out of it.
The issue of "fooled by randomness" applies to so many aspects of life,
not just financial industry. There are some insightful comments in the book.
If you expect to learn many things from this book,
you may be disappointed. For the first couple of hours, his snideness and arrogance
bothered me, but then I began to enjoy listening to this frustrated flawed character
who occasionally speaks truth in a tragicomedy style.
34 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 15-02-13
An Excellent and Worthwhile Book
An interesting book that is enlivened by stories of various traders and insults targeted at journalists, economists, MBAs, and philistines in general. He comes off as kind of arrogant and condesending but since I'm too thick to understand that he's talking about me, I find the irreverent tone rather enjoyable. He does a great job on a difficult topic.
28 people found this helpful
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- Jack
- 04-02-14
Commentary too random and disjointed
What disappointed you about Fooled by Randomness?
The theme was both disorganized and too narrowly focused on financial traders? It lacked specific real world cases and examples.
15 people found this helpful
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- Hardik
- 02-04-18
Taleb Fooled by his Own Randomness
As someone who reads a lot of books on this and other subjects, I found this to be a waste of time and not deserving of the praise it received.
At first I thought I could appreciate its appeal to those not well versed in the rhetoric of randomness and the inherently faulty mechanisms of human decision making but not all the ideas expressed in the book are accurate and thoroughly vetted, resulting in a lot of misleading conclusions.
As an aside, I personally didn’t enjoy the forced bouts of arrogant condescension towards an unnecessary broad range of professionals. Taleb's Black Swan is a much better read and probabaly his best work (from what I've read)
If you want someone with true mastery to comprehensively guide you through better decision making, read Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow.
4 people found this helpful
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- M. Blake
- 28-05-12
very entertaining and eye opening
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
This is not only entertaining, but enlightening because it illustrates with easily understandable examples, how randomness affects all of us whether we realize it or not. By applying the principles to our own lives, we may be able to understand our behavior and behavior of others better while giving us an advantage over others who do not understand these things. The author is clever in using illustrations to depict some complex statistical ideas and he does so in a very practical and understandable way that even non-math people can understand.
This is not a dry mathematical book but a very enjoyable read/listen. I kept coming back to it again and again just like any good book that keeps you going until it is finished. I enjoyed The Black Swan and this book is no disappointment - definitely recommend.
If you could give Fooled by Randomness a new subtitle, what would it be?
Things you might not realize were randomness and how you deal with it in your life.
3 people found this helpful
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- Ken Premo
- 26-03-14
Great information but...
I really enjoyed the ideas put forward in this book and I think it is very important that randomness and statistics be better understood in society. That said, the author of the book is long-winded, imperious, and extremely self focused. "I" is the most common word used throughout the book while the author disdains his fellow traders on Wall Street, his fellow MBA's, and his fellow academics.
If you can get past the author, the ideas and information of the book is worth the effort.
7 people found this helpful
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- Marink
- 08-03-11
interesting book
An interesting book from a very cocky author. Taleb hits important points. I believe if I had read this book earlier in my life, it could have saved me from some of the mistakes that I made. The book is a must for any trader given that it works like a medicin to desinflate one's ego. Still, I believe that the author overestimates the impact of randomness, but just by making the reader aware of its presence and importance, makes it worthwhile the read!!!!!
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