It is missing all of the events that didn’t happen (in an alternative universe, the Titanic didn’t sink) as well as the events we don’t know about. It’s an account of some of the events that happened in the past. The second problem is that we have a very narrow understanding of history. It’s so unpredictable that the overwhelming majority of predictions we make end up being wrong. The belief we have is that the future will resemble the past, so if we look at the past, we will be able to catch a glimpse of the future. We use past predictions and narratives as sources of information to predict the future. So, what do we use past predictions and narratives for? It only appears predictable after it happened, due to past predictions. Past predictions make history sound like all that happened in the past was “bound to happen”.Įg: When we look at it today, many say that 9/11 was perfectly predictable. Making past predictions is the action of looking at historical events and making these events appear as a logical sequence, leading up to the situation we have today. Part of the job of building narratives is creating “past predictions.” I make it sound like the gap year was a logical thing to do, while it was in fact completely random. A narrative links a series of random actions to each other to make them appear as a logical sequence of events.Įg: when I tell myself my own life story, I say that I studied for one year but didn’t like it, so I took a gap year. Narratives are compelling stories we tell ourselves. However, the way we perceive the world isn’t at all how the world is.

We approach and interpret life using heuristics, a series of mental shortcuts that help us make sense of the world in a logical manner. We can’t perceive this randomness because our brains are not wired to. If people like it, I'll come back to share Part II, III, and IV. Here's the first part, Fooled by Randomness. This enabled me to catch the essence of the Incerto, and to remind myself of its wisdom without the need to go through the five books again. In order to have a broad view of Nassim Taleb's ideas, I summarized each book in less than 1000 words, then assembled these summaries into one article. I read the entire Incerto a few weeks ago.

Incerto fooled by randomness