Fooled by Randomness
#28 of 644 all-time
Fooled by Randomness
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
23 people recommended it in 9 threads, 2014–2021.
1 commenter pushed back on it — worth reading the threads.
What people on Hacker News said
Taleb's Incerto series changed how I thought about investing, risk, and life in general.
Poetic, deep, useful, and entertaining. Fantastic. A pleasure to read and listen to in audio while driving/traveling.
The role of chance in everyday life! It plays a big role!
Fooled by Randomness has lots of good analysis of survivorship bias, trend following and other mistaken pattern matching strategies that are hard wired into us, and blind us to the true nature of events.
Changed my life and my perspective on doing business, building company and understanding luck.
I feel like you can derive a lot of his other work if you payed attention in undergraduate probability theory and took Fooled by Randomness to heart.
Where it comes up
- Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before? 2020 · 7 recommendations
- Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything? 2019 · 5 recommendations
- Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021? 2021 · 4 recommendations
- Ask HN: Which non-technology book has influenced you the most and why? 2017 · 2 recommendations
- Ask HN: Best books you read in the past decade? 2019 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2019? 2019 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: Which books have made you introspect? 2018 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: What are the must-read books about economics/finance? 2016 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: What are your favorite books? I'm bored 2014 · 1 recommendation