There have been four individuals whose work have profoundly changed the way I view the world, and Taleb’s “Fooled by Randomness” is one of those works.

This book and his “Black Swan” have given me a completely new mental model with which to view the world. Luck, chance, randomness, Black Swans, or whatever you want to call it, have had and will continue to have a more profound effect on your life, and human history, that we realize and care to admit.

In print, and on twitter, he is an abrasive character, but if you watch him on youtube, he doesn’t seem to be ( at least the ones I’ve seen).

I think he plays an important role in pointing out the foibles of ivory tower “experts” and giving credit to actual practitioners, people he considers having “skin in the game”.