nassim nicholas taleb, the improbable best selling author of the black swan believes that success is illusionary (at times it seems he believes everything is illusionary – it’s all random, all luck!). his main thesis is that luck is often behind what we normally perceive to be success and that humans are hard-wired to under-estimate the role that randomness plays via various biases:

sample bias. (over-generalizing or generalizing based on unsuitable data sets, winners only for instance). hindsight bias. (given an infinite set of monkeys randomly typing away at a computer, one of them will produce an exact version of homer’s iliad, but that doesn’t mean it would be wise to invest in the monkey’s next work. i.e. past performance doesn’t tell us as much as we think about future performance). confirmation bias (erroneously fitting data to preconceived theories). etc.
our brains are programmed to find patterns in the world around us which is great in that a man having seen his friend eaten by a tiger will assume a pattern and run as fast as he can at the next tiger encounter. but it also means we often see patterns where they do not exist. not only that but we also tend to get caught in the comfort of the ‘status quo bias’.

along the way, taleb debunks traditional economics on the basis that homo economicus is an idealized fiction with little relevance to the real world. in an aside (that helped me see a super-indecisive cousin in a new light), he says that the truly rational can’t make decisions. taking decisions requires the emotional non-rational part of the brain to takeover. the truly rational mind enters an infinite loop attempting to assess the myriad alternatives aiming for perfect knowledge leading in the real world to debilitating indecisiveness.

there are also some amusing stories of characters from taleb’s wall st past often showing how ‘perceived’ success leads to misplaced confidence in traders that translates into real cockiness or charisma as it is known on the street. until that is the inevitable blowup.

the book is terribly written, but the noticeably unedited style – he calls it personable writing, is endearing. it’s also ultimately humbling (putting human success in perspective) and scary – momentarily opening your mind to the usually hidden potential for catastrophe. look forward to his next book, apparently on religion.