Just Seven Things

Influenced by Randomness II

I continue to read and be influenced in a (very) good way by Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s marvellous Fooled by Randomness. My first post (only) nine days ago on how the book was impacting me seems like a long time ago:

1. The mental state required to engage with his work means that I feel like I’m blowing some cobwebs from the furthest recesses of my brain. I had to scan a couple of articles earlier today in the Harvard Business Review and it felt like I was reading the Sun.

2.  It makes me feel a bit intellectually cowed/ inadequate. I like this because it makes me strive to be better and relax into thinking in a better way

3. It’s stopping me being too intellectually shallow in my current Madgex strategizing with the board. However, if Mr Taleb ever read my posts, I would hope they would be appreciated as the speculations of an amatuer as opposed to the attempts of a professional. And not conclusions. I still feel like I’m planting the seeds for future investigation and thought. I hope at that stage not to be fooled by randomness

4. I feel even further away from the ’utopian who believe(s) in an idealized humankind….. your how-to-reach-happiness-in-twenty-steps and how-to-become-a-better-person-in-a-week book writer… thinking we (I) can control our nature at will and transform it by mere edict in order to attain, among other things, happiness and rationality’. Yes. You can see how much this affected me.

Overall I am noticing subtle shifts in myself. I am relaxing into my intuition and away from my intellectual ‘theorising’. I am expanding what I think is a slightly better than average talent in making (granted sometimes spurious) connections between the less-often-connected in different fields.

Most importantly, I’m enjoying the journey even more…..