HN Books @HNBooksMonth

There was an entire book about this that became famous during the 2008 financial crisis:

Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb

https://www.amazon.com/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Markets-Ince...

It's literally about how options traders and the like can be lucky for 10 or 20 years, but they are actually idiots who destroy the economy.

They think they are skilled, and others think they are skilled, but it's luck. You can also call it "anti-luck" because their short-term actions can cause the long-term crisis.

This book was a #1 best seller, as were most of Taleb's books, but for some reason whenever I mention it to anybody, I get blank stares.

I think it's just really hard for people to understand phenomena that occur at time scales of say more than a decade.

(BTW Another good book about recurring economic cycles is Dalio's 2022 The Changing World Order. All of this stuff has happened before. This is separate from crypto, and relates to the global economic environment.)

⬐ tanseydavid

This book was my introduction to Taleb and I loved it. I recommend it frequently.

⬐ dibt

>It's literally about how options traders and the like can be lucky for 10 or 20 years

I don't see how doing anything successfully (in this case, gaining profit?) for 20 years can be described as "luck." Surviving/being successful that long trading isn't a fluke.

I haven't read the book, but I know that Talib talks about 'tail risk' a lot and 'risk of ruin'. Which are very different than what you describe. If my bet size is only limited to 2%, I would be happy to be "lucky" for 20 years!

⬐ catothedev

Example: sell attractively priced insurance against a 100-year-flood. You make money for 20 years, but then a crazy big flood bankrupts your insurance company. Who would have thought that would happen?! Options (and other things) can be structured to create 'catastrophic insurance like' outcomes.

⬐ niyikiza

Great book. It was my introduction to Taleb as well It profoundly shaped how I interpret markets and approach my own investments.

⬐ lordnacho

> whenever I mention it to anybody, I get blank stares.

Maybe it's the circles you move in. In finance nobody hasn't heard of it.

Well deserved reputation too, it really changed how I saw things. It's weird because even as someone who studied probability and stats, I hadn't thought it would change my entire worldview.

Well, there are some related topics on Quora: http://www.quora.com/Randomness?q=random and http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-good-books-on-random-proc...

You can actually ask your question there as well in case this question gets unnoticed on HN; Quora people are very smart and pretty responsive

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_process, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_walk and do a search for Random Processes or Stochastic Processes on Amazon bookstore

Read about Entropy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy A good book on Information theory can help you put it in context: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_18?url=search-alias...

Check out GMP http://gmplib.org/

If you're philosophically inclined read some existentialists, they deal a lot with irrationality and chaos: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism

If you're financially inclined read Random Walk Down Wall Street: http://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-Street/dp/039331 and the Black Swan: http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-Improbable/dp... you may want to check out his other book as well, it is rather non-technical: http://www.amazon.com/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Chance-Market...

To learn more on how Wall Street deals with the stock market randomness read some books on Time Series analysis and forecasting, e.g the classic http://www.amazon.com/Time-Analysis-Forecasting-Probability-...

If you are a data scientist in heart read this great Q&A thread: http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-become-a-data-scientist

I wish I could help you with a link to a clear non-technical introductory article but this is all I've got. As random as it gets:)

Probably some good introductory book on science will fit the bill, science after all deals primarily with randomness. You may want to check out http://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/...

⬐ drewse

Also, since it looks like you're like you've been on HN for a while, do you know how I can add this to the questions section? Some posts start with "Ask HN:"

[I'll delete this comment once the issue's been resolved]

⬐ helwr

Just put "Ask HN:" in the title

⬐ drewse

Thanks, but I guess I can't change that now.

⬐ drewse

Thank you very much! You are extremely helpful and supplied me with a lot of material to look over! Some of these books or topics are only covered by big textbooks, which is not exactly what I was looking for (I think it was unclear in my original post), but you did help introduce me to some new topics and fields where randomness takes place.

Also, it's nice to be reminded about Quora. I've heard of it before, but hadn't thought about it in a while. I might try it and give it a go!