Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Has any writer ever distilled his key ideas into his titles so well?

Great example from this book.  Casinos employ all kinds of mathematicians to build sophisticated models of probability to ensure their edge.  These probabilities work within the rule-bound world of games, but to imagine life exists within the controlled parameters of a game is what Taleb calls “the ludic fallacy” (from the Latin for game).  In real life, crazy things you couldn’t have predicted may happen:

You almost don’t need to read these books, once you grasp the implications of the titles.  Our brains have difficulty grasping the implications of probability. 

Prepare yourself and live a life that accepts and can absorb risk.

You’d be crazy to armchair psychoanalyze as feisty a Twitter arguer as Nassim Nicholas Taleb, but I did feel like this passage in Fooled By Randomness suggests hints to an origin story for a man obsessed with probability:

I’ve now read all these books and found them entertaining, eccentric, inventive, infectious, and fun.  I even liked:

Felt like my brain was getting steady nutrition as well as entertainment from these books.

This commencement address he gave is one of many samples available for free over at Medium.