"Fooled By Randomness" By Nassim Taleb | Reading Highlights #1

Normally, I write posts about the books that I’m reading in a certain way. My process is relatively simple:

1. I read each morning. Usually for anywhere from 1-2 hours
2. As I’m reading, I make highlights (I use iBooks and an iPad to read)
3. When I’m done reading for that session, I upload the highlights from my iPad to my computer
4. From there, I compile the highlights and then re-read them and try to come up with a central theme for a post. This, I would say, is the hardest part of this process because I am trying to take a bunch of highlights that are taken out of the context of several chapters and come up with a central point that connects them all together
5. Once I have my theme, I open my note-taking app and start writing
6. Then I open Steemit or Busy or whatever I’m using to post to the Steem blockchain and I copy/paste into the post and that’s it.

Number 4 on this list is the reason why I want to try something a little different. Due to the search for a central theme, I end up cutting out a vast majority of my highlights. By the time I finish writing 3-5 posts on a particular book, I will have only used less than 10% of the highlights that I actually thought were relevant and important.

This leaves a lot unsaid and leaves a lot of important information out of my posts. It also means that I have a rather incomplete record for myself when I look back on the posts and re-read them as I would do with notes.

So in the interest of making my reading posts more like notes that I take while I’m reading books, I’m going to ditch step #4. Instead of cutting out 90% of the highlights in the interest of having a central theme, I’m going to have many themes working at the same time and I’m going to include any and all highlights that I deem relevant to myself and to anyone who wishes to read them.

This post will be my “test” of this new format. Let me know in the comments what you think of this less formal and more “note-style” format!

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Write What You Like

“The rules while writing the first edition of this book had been to avoid discussing (a) anything that I did not either personally witness on the topic or develop independently, and (b) anything that I have not distilled well enough to be able to write on the subject with only the slightest effort. Everything that remotely felt like work was out.”-Nassim Taleb, Fooled By Randomness

I always like to start reading a book from the very beginning. Some people prefer the style of reading where you only read what is immediately interesting to you. I prefer to read the book in order from cover to cover. I’m OCD in a certain capacity in that I feel the “timeline” of events/knowledge in a book are best remembered when read from beginning to end. Including Preface and Acknowledgments and all. I consider these to set the stage for what I’m about to read.

The above quote delivers on that. It gleans insight into the way that the author - Nassim Taleb - thinks and writes and I feel that it is an invaluable asset as a reader. This quote is also very relevant to me as a (very) amateur writer. When you write, you want to write about what you like and what is relevant to you. If you write about forced topics, then you lose genuine curiosity and enjoyment in what you’re writing and I believe that this transmits directly through your text and to your reader(s).

Intellectual Insecurity and Personal Evolution:

“I hope to make this book organic—by, to use traders’ lingo, “adding to the winner”—and let it reflect my personal evolution instead of holding on to these new ideas and putting them into a new book altogether”-Nassim Taleb, Fooled By Randomness

As humans, we are constantly in a state of flux and evolution. We are constantly changing - physically, intellectually and emotionally.

Thus, the ideas and beliefs we held yesterday may not be the same ideas and beliefs we hold today. I feel that many people hold on to their beliefs a little too strongly. I have learned from past experience that the best way to hold beliefs (at least, for me) is to hold them strongly but be willing to change as soon as something better comes along.

If you are in a debate about beliefs and someone presents ideas that are clearly far better and more logical than yours, then I believe it is your duty (as an intellectually curious individual) to allow those ideas into your mind and really spend time thinking about them.

“I believe that the principal asset I need to protect and cultivate is my deep-seated intellectual insecurity. My motto is 'my principal activity is to tease those who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously.' Cultivating such insecurity in place of intellectual confidence may be a strange aim—and one that is not easy to implement. To do so we need to purge our minds of the recent tradition of intellectual certainties”-Nassim Taleb, Fooled By Randomness

As I was saying before, people tend to hold too firmly to their ideas and beliefs. They tend to take themselves and their ideas a little too seriously. While it’s good to have firm beliefs that you feel to be true deep in your core, it’s also imperative that you are able to change and adapt when your beliefs are challenged and proven otherwise.

Many politicians, crypto enthusiasts, businessmen and businesswomen, professors, etc. are infamous for holding on to some pretty strange beliefs. Beliefs that turn out to be wrong and costly for both them and others that are affected by their actions.

One of the most evident (and comically so) places that I see this is in the idea of “right” and “left” politics.. Democrats and Republicans. The individuals in these groups tend to agree with everything their group stands for (or at least, they purport that they do to the public and to their peers). In reality, the best position to have is one that supports the best ideas, regardless of whether they are “right or left”.

Fooling Ourselves

“Half a millennium later the severely introspecting and insecure Montaigne stands tall as a role model for the modern thinker. In addition, the man had exceptional courage: It certainly takes bravery to remain skeptical; it takes inordinate courage to introspect, to confront oneself, to accept one’s limitations—scientists are seeing more and more evidence that we are specifically designed by mother nature to fool ourselves”-Nassim Taleb, Fooled By Randomness

Our minds love to play tricks on us. It’s a common saying and it’s pretty well-known at this point, but we continually fall prey to it.

Introspectiveness is one of the greatest indicators of intelligence, in my opinion. When I meet someone who has well-established ideas and is great at articulating them, but still has a tone of questioning everything that’s coming out of their mouth, I get excited. I see great intelligence and curiosity in an individual such as this. It takes courage to admit that you had an idea that you believed in so profoundly one day, but then you came to the conclusion the next day that you were completely wrong.

“Furthermore, the kind of luck in finance is of the kind that nobody understands but most operators think they understand, which provides us a magnification of the biases”-Nassim Taleb, Fooled By Randomness

I mentioned politics before as being a funny place of people holding on to ideas too strongly. Another place that you see this is in finance. Whether in crypto or in traditional markets, it’s hilarious to see that many people believe that they have a “natural gift” at trading and making money in the markets. In reality, markets are unpredictable and completely counter-intuitive. The person who says that they have the most firm grasp on how markets operate is the person who has the least firm grasp on how markets operate.

“Most journalists do not take things too seriously: After all, this business of journalism is about pure entertainment, not a search for truth, particularly when it comes to radio and television. The trick is to stay away from those who do not seem to know that they are just entertainers (like George Will, who will appear in Chapter 2) and actually believe that they are thinkers”-Nassim Taleb, Fooled By Randomness

This one connects to all the ideas I’ve been talking about here. A lot of people fool themselves into thinking that journalists and the media as a whole are there to inform us on the truth. Instead, it’s important to realize that news, media, journalists, etc. are by majority there to entertain us and capture our attention, not inform us of the most relevant and trustworthy information, free of bias.

Writing Style and Taking the Good With the Bad

“One final comment on the style. I elected to keep the style of this book as idiosyncratic as it was in the first edition. Homo sum, good and bad. I am fallible and see no reason to hide my minor flaws if they are part of my personality no more than I feel the need to wear a wig when I have my picture taken or borrow someone else’s nose when I show my face. Almost all the book editors who read the draft recommended changes at the sentence level (to make my style “better”) and in the structure of the text (in the organization of chapters); I ignored almost all of them and found out that none of the readers thought them necessary—as a matter of fact, I find that injecting the personality of the author (imperfections included) enlivens the text."-Nassim Taleb, Fooled By Randomness

These highlights are all taken from the Preface of the book. Nassim’s comments about his writing style and his general ideas about writing and thinking and sharing ideas are valuable to keep in mind as I continue to read and share my favorite passages here.

As you can see from the above highlight, Nassim is a true practitioner in the ideas he laid out before. This passage is showing off his own intellectual insecurity, his ability to not take his work too seriously, his ability to have firm beliefs and yet be open to his own personal evolution, etc.

When it comes to my own writing, many might be surprised to find out that I only do 1 draft. A lot of writers will write, read, edit, re-write, read, edit… I’m not a huge fan of that for my own writing. I see the value of re-reading and editing your work in a more formal sense, but when writing things in a more conversational and informal style (like this post that you’re reading now), I find that editing too much can be as bad (or even worse) as editing too little.

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Questions:

I always love to end on some questions and discussion points for the comment section.

One main question I have is regarding the new format of this post. It’s a lot different than my previous writing style. There really isn’t a central theme or topic. These are just my favorite highlights from the reading session I had this morning along with my commentary below them. It’s intended to be more like a note than like a formal post.

Do you like this format and did you find the information valuable and (hopefully) entertaining? Which was your favorite highlight from today and why?