In his witty, informative, sober yet often ludicrous and sarcastic tone, Taleb expounds on the simple yet unsolvable problem of inference. This problem is as old as Solon at least, who already warned against the human tendency to infer from little empirical evidence rules and predictions expected to apply in general context, especially in the future. The echo of Solon's warning comes across the book and is embodied by Popper's (naive, as some say) falsificationism and his suggestion not to take science too seriously, as it may be erecting buildings on fragile fundations, to be continuously subjected to revisions or rejections. Popper had embodied Solon's call also in politics and socioeconomics with his vision of the open society, where tolerance of alternative or even competitive views is fundamental to avoid errors and be able to face sudden changes. Taleb observes that monotheisms may have a large part in the difficulty to establish a truly open society, as they foster the idea of infallibilism, monism and of absolute truth. This tendency was in fact new to the Mediterranean area where they arose, and were not totally successful in silencing the competitive attitudes, particularly stoicism, to which Taleb tributes an explicit apology toward the end, though his appreciation of Montaigne, Carneades and Zeno are evident throughout. In earnest, Taleb admits that he himself is no better than anyone else in not being fooled by randomness, but his advantage is that he is aware of that (he is a specialist in risk trading, and it is interesting to note that though the book was published in 2004, he was still able to made a large fortune in recent years using the tools he exposes. This is consistent with his claim that people can be said of how to behave for very short time (when they may even agree with the suggestions), but then revert to their innate habits; and he also state his personal paradox, for which he gains because other do not apply what he is explaining).
Being a personal essay and not a treatise, Taleb is free from formal pressure yet conveys many concepts clearly and wittingly. He presents the results of Kahneman and Tversky at the base of behavioral finance, evolutionary psychology and brain modularity to try to explain why we may just be hardwired to be fooled by noise and not be able to behave according to our rational grasp of probabilities, as we are emotional beings - being emotional is fundamental, but has its downsides which need to be constrained, that is.
Taleb assaults MBAs and professional traders for their apparent success based according to him more on luck than skill. He comments on the way data are easy to fit post factum, so stories to justify success are easy to accomodate though they may just be fiction. He supports the idea that heroism is to be judged on actions, not on their results - just the opposite of what historians normally do.
The text is laden with Latin and Greek citations, which make a nice contrast to the Wall Street kind of setting of the action. His disgust for people compulsively checking news, fluctuations of prices and making judgments on easy to be scooped biases (hindsight, survivorship, anchoring, availability, endowement, and so on) is just lovely, admitted that he himself if occasionally the object of the attack, except for when that is tolerated for aestetic purposes.
Very refreshing, intriguing, against the grain and smart. A must read.