Fools

Welcome Fools,

Let me start off clearly and give credit where credit is due. The title for my blog, "Fools Of Randomness" is influenced hugely by my reading, interpretation and understanding of the book "Fooled By Randomness"written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. If you have read any of the authors work, great we are on the same philosophical page and for those that have not, I suggest purchasing a copy first thing tomorrow. I shall explain my reasoning.

In his philosophical masterpiece Taleb brings to light in a bright flash of white, the fallibility of human knowledge.

Taleb sets forth with that idea that modern humans are often unaware of the existence of randomness in our current society as we often overestimate causality(We see elephants in the clouds instead of understanding that they are randomly shaped clouds that appear to our eyes as Elephants) and tend to a more explainable world view. Understand that your current world view, your bias's and prejudices are as a direct result of your experience in a commonly shared reality. The conclusion that you end up at is that there is no absolute certainty of knowledge.

Our skewed views and cognitive bias's create a second reality that is completely personal. No two persons can share the same world. They may be similar depending on how coincident their independent experiences of the commonly shared reality are. These realities are plagued with bias, and these in turn affect our our judgement and decision making.

Heuristics are strategies and experienced based techniques using readily accessible, though loosely applicable, information to control problem solving in human beings and machines. This explains the origin of some of the bias that each of us hold and they are rooted in emotion. Humans are emotional creatures, we judge something based on how we 'feel' about it rather than on rational logical and merited thought. The emotional component in decision making is what makes us all unique as it opens up a number of new and different possible outcomes that were previously not comprehend-able.

I find it so strange that history is forward flowing yet we envision backward. We look back with hindsight bias and draw linear conclusions saying things like, "if that had not had happened then...". And if we were to rewind back to to that event. At that moment in time there was no possibly accurate way of linking any future event based on your current experience but yet in a years time we are able to look back and join the dots. This is evidence of the bias's we all hold. Our brains are hard wired to make connections and relationships that are 'convenient' and 'useful' rather than an exact detailed account of individual events.

I am fool of randomness. I am however aware (to what extent, I don't know) of my own bias's. I embrace what makes me different. Cogito ergo sum.

I have been staring at this for awhile now and its time I draw a conclusion. Plus its a hot Friday afternoon in beautiful sunny Cape Town, South Africa.

I will be posting once weekly or whenever I feel the need to share a concept, idea, or really any thought that I find mildly interesting. Everything I have discussed in this post, I would like you to bear in mind when reading anything I write. Free your mind to all possibilities, anything can happen we are just all fools of randomness.