The degree of randomness in an activity : someone 'lower' who does something well repeatedly wrongly gets less credit than the CEO who might have made one or two good decisions.

The higher-up the corporate ladder, the lower the evidence of contribution. One's dependence on randomness is greater. $10 million earned playing Russian Roulette does not have the same value as $10 million earned through the diligent and artful practice of dentistry. Whereas a dentist who followed the dental-school and self-practice path has a smaller range of possibilities : ranging only from a dentist practice for poor people versus a dentist practice for rich people. However, if the events are truly random, then any correlation is purely coincidental and not causal.Ĭonsider all possible parallel paths of outside effects : janitor who won the lottery would have had 999,999 lives with unsuccessful lottery tickets, and one possible life winning. In moments of statistical weakness, some folks even develop theories to explain such 'ordered' patterns. Unfortunately, we are often fooled by random events whenever apparent order emerges in the system. Randomness refers to the absence of patterns, order, coherence, and predictability in a system. They tend to explain random outcomes as non-random. Taleb sets forth the idea that modern humans are often unaware of the existence of randomness. Randomness is world’s ability to create unpredictable events, occasions, occurrences, situations, collapses and so on. Randomness is not a theory, nor is it a concept. Some of the URLs of the original article are available at the end of this compilation)įooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets is a book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb that deals with the fallibility of human knowledge. ( Please note that this article has been compiled based on excerpts from over 30 articles written on 'Fooled by Randomness'.

Taleb randomness