Fooled By Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

Fooled by Randomness’s author, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, is a former trader and a professor of risk engineering. He narrates the book’s fictional stories and provides its instructional voice. Although the book focuses on scientific analysis and the nature of analytical rigor, Taleb includes a great deal of personal background. He discusses his family’s roots in Lebanon, his immigration to the United States, his early years as a trader, his intellectual pursuits, and his skeptical view of the media. Taleb indicates multiple times that he is not above being fooled by randomness, and while he is critical and his tone can be biting, this enables him to maintain a sense of humility in the book.

Taleb is outright scornful of the media, particularly financial commentators whom he refers to as charlatans. As an example, Taleb describes noted journalist George Will as one whose “profession […] is merely to sound smart and intelligent to the hordes” (68). In general, Taleb expresses derision toward financial commentators who oversimplify complex topics to make them seem simple. By extension, Taleb also expresses his general frustration with information overload. Later in the book, he mentions that he no longer watches television, and when the TV set is on in his offices, he turns down the volume so that the pundits who are speaking appear to be clownish rather than intimidating.