Reviewed Date: September 16th, 2021
“Those who are unlucky in life in spite of their skills would eventually rise.”
We humans couldn’t wrap our minds around the fact that the world is more random than we think. Though much of our success (or failure) is the result of luck, we have a hard time accepting the fact because we invest our energies and time into it. (It’s strange; when others attain something, we say it’s luck, but when it comes to us, we say a different story).
Whether we accept it or not, it’s all around us. The primary reason why we negate randomness is we are not wired to see probability everywhere. Even if we try, it would be extremely tiresome (imagine trying to find chances to get an accident when we are on the road).
We believe the world is deterministic; we think if we do this and that, we attain success (the self-help industry thrives on this aspect alone). But we forgot a simple thing: those who had been billionaires happened to be at the right place and at the right time (Bill Gates is a good example). Right place, America. Right now, the software industry is booming. This doesn’t mean he got no skills. He has, but luck favored him.
Many rare events like the 2008 economic recession, the 1929 Great Depression, and the dot-com bubble are a few instances of randomness. These rare events could have been avoided if the world were, as many believe, deterministic. Because it is not, we happened to be victims of randomness.
On a final note, we need financial systems that could sustain any rare event. As Nassim Taleb said, we should not build systems on the assumption that there would be corruption internally; we should build robust systems that also consider corruption but still work.
I really like Nassim Taleb’s works. The only person who made me love mathematics, especially probability. If you haven’t read any of his books, I suggest reading Fooled by Randomness.
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