Randomness & My 4th Speech

Recently I read a book 'Fooled By Randomness' by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I found the book to be so interesting and confirming to my own ideology that I decided to use it in my speech. This Tuesday I delivered my 4th speech at the local Toastmasters Club and I have written here the content of the speech verbatim.

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Ladies and Gentlemen! Do you ever feel that you are fooled by randomness? I will make it simple for you. Have you ever thought that your presence in Toastmasters is a matter of pure luck? Had not some friend of yours told you about it, you would not be sitting here. Let’s say you got to know of through the internet. Do not be surprised if I tell you that the odds of having it found on the internet were only 1 in 10 million. Bingo! You still got it right.

Welcome to the world of uncertainty and randomness.

In the beginning I uttered a phrase, “fooled by randomness”, so tonight I will speak about fools and I will speak about randomness.

Let’s play a game now. I will give Rs 1 million to anyone who will play Russian roulette. All you have to do is to put a gun having only one bullet in one of the available six chambers to your head and pull the trigger. Every time you pull the trigger, the chances of your survival are overwhelmingly 83%. Say, you keep winning this game for a long time i.e. until you die, which of course you will if you keep playing this game. Suddenly, you will realize that you have become the envy of everyone around you. You will elicit the praise and admiration of some fatuous journalist who will then go on to describe that how even by the sound of the revolving chamber or the click of the trigger you were able to predict the outcome. When in fact, the reality was that you were plain lucky.

But, reality is far more vicious than Russian roulette. It delivers the fatal bullet rather infrequently, like a gun, which has hundreds or even thousands of chambers instead of only six. After a few dozen tries, you forget about the existence of that fatal bullet, under a false sense of security.

Let’s talk about fools now.

We often hear about rags-to-riches story or about people who have been very successful in their businesses or in their careers. They might be very hard working and diligent but they are lucky fools if they fail to recognize the importance of luck in their success. Now, some biographer will dwell on the life of one such lucky fool and will come out with a glowing account of his incisive mind and remarkable style. Should he stop outperforming the following year, which has a 50% probability, everyone will start laying blame. They will find fault with the relaxation in his work ethics or his dissipated lifestyle. They will find something which he did before when he was successful that he has subsequently stopped doing and attribute his failure to that. When in fact, the truth will be that he simply ran out of luck.

Let’s talk about randomness now.

We are probability blind. We are trained to look into the obvious and ignore what is not obvious. I will illustrate this with the black swan problem. No amount of observations of white swans can allow you to infer that all swans are white. Observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that. That is, we read too much into shallow recent history. We tend to make generalized statements like, if something has never happened before it will not happen in the future also. Though in reality, things that have never happened before tend to eventually happen.

It’s not a small world!

We often run into friends and relatives in the most unexpected places and we utter with surprise, it’s a small world! The world is much larger than we think. It’s just that we are not taking into account the odds of having an encounter with one specific person, in a specific place at a specific time. Rather we are only testing for the probability of meeting anyone we have ever met in the past and in any place we will visit during the period concerned. The probability of the latter event is several thousand times the probability of the former.

So, so far if your life has been very good to you and lady fortuna has been smiling on you ever since you were born, do not be flattered that all along you had the right mix of skills and talent that have propelled you this far. Instead give some room to luck or randomness also because you never know when lady fortuna might stop smiling on you and you get thrown off to some obscure island with no hope of ever returning back. But, that is again a matter of probability!

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I completed my speech in 5:05 when I easily could have taken 7:30. Following are the suggestions and comments that I got from the fellow toastmasters:

Wonderful topic selection. You used interesting words and phrases. Good use of examples. The structure of the speech could have been better. You should slow down a bit. Be in the present so that you don’t have to think back/remember the speech.
- Arun Pujari

Flawless but too fast.
- Punita

A very interesting topic. Very good content, well organized. What took away from your speech was your fast pace. Slow down for the audience to absorb what is being said. Don’t be so nervous – practice with someone to get rid of it. Thoroughly enjoyed your speech. Hope to listen to more of your stuff. Work on facial expressions too.
- Divya

A lovely topic well peppered with humor. A little more preparation would have done wonders. I personally enjoy your topic selection. This too was very good.
- Vikram

An interesting topic. Good opening and ending. You delivered your speech randomly, with pauses. You could have avoided memorizing the speech.
- Shouvik

Innovative subject but could have rehearsed more. Humor was the highlight of your speech. Congrats!
- Joseph

Very interesting topic. Your pace was bit fast.
- Anand

Excellent topic selection. Very informative. Could have controlled the speed of your speech. Pauses in between were little too much. Otherwise, a good speech. Overall, very good speech.
- Joy

Excellent language use. Advice – don’t try to deliver a speech by rote. Go for the content and spirit, rather than exact words.

My own observation: I have realised that I speak too fast. And because I speak too fast, I don't get time to think up my speech. I never memorize my speeches but because of the pace I am forced to remember it verbatim. So, I am going to work on the pace of my speech delivery.

Au revoir