Fooled by Randomness

Not so enamoured with this popular book. Taleb finds himself incredibly intelligent for stating that hedging one's bets is a good idea and that randomness exists. Much of the book is spent on autofellatio and disparaging complex philosophy. It starts being a worthwhile read at about page 206. The typeface is the book's greatest achievement.

The main purpose of this book is to introduce the reader to the fact that so many times we give people credit for success, we are doing so in error and they have just been the beneficiary of random luck. It's important to note that we all do this ourselves as well and if we don't recognize the truth, we leave ourselves open to risk that we don't even see because we assume better of ourselves than we really should be.

That was all quite excellent.

I was a bit surprised by Taleb's repeated praising of George Soros throughout the book. It didn't really seem tied in to the main theme very well and really seemed to come out of (far) left field. As I read through the remainder of Incerto, maybe the connection will become clearer to me.