Don't Be Fooled

I’ve so much to say but so little drive to say it. Just watching the evening news usually gives me about three different things to rant about yet I just can’t get around to it. And in other aspects of life well…

I think drive must be parceled out in discreet, finite amounts and frankly, I’m using it up elsewhere. In lieu of a personal post I present to you a short excerpt of a book I just started and am enjoying immensely.

From Fooled By Randomness (Second Edition) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb:

…the description coming form journalism is certainly not just an unrealistic representation of the world but rather the one that can fool you the most by grabbing your attention via your emotional apparatus – the cheapest to deliver sensation. Take the mad cow “threat” for example: Over a decade of hype it only killed people (in the highest estimates) in the hundreds as compared to car accidents (several hundred thousands!) – except that the journalistic description of the latter would not be commercially fruitful. (Note that the risk of dying from food poisoning or in a car accident on the way to a restaurant is greater than dying from mad cow disease.) This sensationalism can divert empathy towards wrong causes: Cancer and malnutrition being the ones that suffer the most from the lack of such attention. Malnutrition in Africa and South-East Asia no longer causes that sense the mental probabilistic map in one’s mind is so geared towards the sensational that one would realize informational gains by dispensing with the news. Another example concerns the volatility of markets. In peoples’ minds lower process are far more “volatile” than sharply higher moves In addition volatility seems to be determined not by the actual moves but by the tone of the media. The market movement in the 18 months after September 11, 2001 were far smaller than the moves that we faced in the 18 months prior – but somehow in the mind of investors they were very volatile. The discussions in the media of the “terrorist threats” magnified the effect of these market moves in peoples’ heads. This is one of the many reasons that journalism may be the greatest plague we face today –

Don’t be fooled by the book’s title it is a very thoughtful and entertaining book.