I admire Nassim Nicholas Taleb a lot. His unconventional perspective to dealing with uncertainities intrigues me. The arguments flow naturally, yet against the traditional approach. However, I confess that I do not grasp the depths of all his ideas.
Despite that, his perspectives have shaped a lot of my thinking and approach to life. I am compelled me to take a step back, and look at the world through a different lens - a lens composed of probability, randomness and chance. More often than not, this point of view brings a lot of self-doubt and humility about my assumptions. It is not easy to accept that the world is not as deterministic as I would like it to be. It is not easy to accept that I am not as smart as I think I am. It is not easy to accept that I am not in control of everything. But, it is necessary for me to acknowledge these facts. Even at the cost of some strained personal relationships, or some lost opportunities.
Over the past month, I re-read my paperback copy of his book “Fooled by Randomness”. Every single time I read any of his works, I’m left with more questions than answers to my existing predilictions. At this moment, I am pondering about - “How do I know the sun will rise tomorrow?”. Given the fact that the topic makes me anxious, and a bit pessimistic, I intend to test his ideas with elimentary empirical expermimentation (nothing “scientific”) (and invite you to do the same).
Given my background in mathematics and software development, I merely desired to replicate his results as mentioned in the book. You can find a collection of scripts I wrote for this purpose in this GitHub repository. This experiment allowed me to spend more time with a specific concept, and a sandbox to play with them. I intend to expand on the scripts, and write about my findings in a series of blog posts. Do check them out if you are interested. I would love to hear your thoughts on them.