Interesting quick listen

Not a huge amount of takeaways, but interesting story and thoughts on how humans compute chance.

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Absolutely must - read

This book is very well written, tapping the most important and relevant issues of logic science. The author addresses the probability issues from many perspectives, starting with reviewing existing philosophy and adding his own interpretation bucked up with multiple examples. It took me a while to listen to this book and I think for this deep analytic thinking one would benefit of printed version. So I definitely recommend!

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Opens your eyes to randomness

If you can look past the fact that the author does on occasion come across as a bit full of himself, you'll be rewarded by some enlightening insights that will change the way you see the impact of randomness on the world. This book will help you on your way to distinguishing the signal from the noise and there is more noise than you might have thought.

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Very good

Met expectations
Will listen again
Essential listening for any human being. It's a shame I'll go back to my old behaviour

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Best takeaway: l learnt why I never seem to learn.

Some reviewers have called his style arrogant. But I found him to be very self-assured, and anyway doesn't everyone look down on some other unfortunate person who just doesn't seem to "get it"?

Like every other good book I have read, the essential lessons in this one too will be forgotten with time. But one key learning will stay with me -- that despite the best intentions of all involved, including ourselves, we don't really learn from instruction; we only really learn from our own experiences, and those are often very flawed and very expensive.

So just read this one, and anything else you read, for the sheer fun of it.

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1 person found this helpful

Interesting thoughts on Randomness in Life

Full of a lot of interesting anecdotes about the way randomness plays its role in life. Unlike books such as Superforecasters which tries to use statistical modelling to predict the future by using historical examples as a class Taleb asks how can we know if things haven't changed. How can you use a baysien model to ask what class something is in if you're not sure if the class has changed or if your base rate has a large enough sample size.

Whilst full of doubt and examples where people are more certain than they ought to be the book doesn't go as far as to show how Taleb himself uses randomness despite him stating a number of times that he still trades and tries to lose little and often but win big on rare events (termed black swans)

The Audio contains odd, and as far as I can tell, random (I appreciate the irony) pauses at the end of chapters that keeps making me wonder if my app has crashed or not.

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Rare common sense:

I am not qualified to comment on the accuracy of his philosophical diversions, which nevertheless were interesting. While I wouldnt agree 100% the broad thrust of his critique of the finance/entertainment industry hits its mark almost all the time.

I have long been put off reading his books by what passed for arrogance on the author's part, considering what he has written as mere common sense. However, as I encountered the sacred cows of the finance world, I increasingly appreciated common sense is surprisingly rare, and, for many, totally counterintuitive.

Indeed here I found his overconfidence added salt to the narrative. I think this is eminently readable, at least for those with some market experience. and the flow of the book works well. intellectually the heart of the book has much to teach but I suspect only about a third of readers will get an intuitive grasp.

My only criticism would be that he NT doesn't seem to have an appreciation of the information structure and institutional dynamics of the industry. That however may be the result of the dynamics of the writing and reading process, which require him to address a specific important idea simply and cohesively rather than stretching himself too thin and making his book overcomplicated.

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good book but some irritating aspects

the central theme of people retrofitting narrative to random events was fascinating and chimed with what you hear in the news, at work and following sport. There was plenty I had heard in other books particularly around irrational behaviours which is a taking interesting area. what detracted somewhat from the book was the first person ranting of person who clearly has a number of chips on their should and who comes across rather arrogant and socially awkward. This shouldn't really affect the listen however I found the style of writing made it difficult to ignore and I almost have up somewhere in the middle. glad I finished it though.

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Great point of view but not so much to apply

The book is great and it reminds you the importance of randomness and how some "gurus" abuse probabilities but I wish the author would have left more guidance or principles to the reader so we can apply it and improve

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This book really can shake your view !

It will shake your view of the world and make you more aware to randomness! Once you know you can have more comfortable life!

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