Taleb and his book Fooled by Randomness

Nassim Taleb as I have mentioned earlier is one of the smartest human beings in the world right now. His book 'Fooled by Randomness' is probably going to be one of the few books which people will read after 200 years, like Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations' or Darwins "The Origin of Species". In showing us how we often mistake coincidence for causality, he is not the first-but his main contribution is to use this idea to make our lives better in a real way, with practical uses and examples. When he says casually "There's no such thing as Alternative Medicine" it sounds like a casual offhand remark-but it is so very significant and useful. You can dump all those alternative medicine doctors safely-Modern Medicine is originally derived from Alternative Medicine and you can safely trust the Scientists at Pfizer and Merck and Ranbaxy to bring you the best of the alternative world medicines-these guys are constantly looking for new ideas and chemicals...

I find so many examples where Taleb's central idea-that we keep getting fooled by randomness, thinking that there's some causality, some pattern out there in our experiences with the world, when there isn't any. Check yourself when you think Sunday is a good day for shopping, or you are a lucky guy always in restaurants to find empty tables-reality is far more brutal, and doesn't care that much about you.

Together with Adam Smith and Darwin, I find Taleb one of the most wonderful and intelligent humans to walk this planet. As often is the case with great minds, they get really famous after their death-and I hope that with Taleb, at least some of the credit he deserves for showing us the difference between anti-knowledge and knowledge he will reap the rewards of in this present life...(a Nobel Prize in Economics by the Swedish Bankers...nah!).

Sanjay