Sitting at a bar, Sharmila said “I am having difficulty reading this book for my book club”
“Is it very violent or too dense?”, I asked
“ I can’t follow it at all”
“What is the name? What is the thesis?”
“The Drunkard’s Walk”.
“Oh! In statistics, that is a common problem discussed. If a completely drunk man could take a step east, west, north or south at every step randomly, after “n” steps, what is the chance he is back to his original spot?”
“That is what the book is all about. Chance. Probability.”
“That is my kind of book. Why are you reading it?”
“Well, Seemita-di chose that book”.

Without any fear or favor, I immediately started reading that book since she had already paid for it.

You know how there are certain kind of books that you relate to immediately? For me, it is the genre of human behavior, behavioral economics and so on. But when you put that with Talent in the corporate sector, you have topped it up like you cannot any more.

Few things bristle me more than people who think they understand talent and can predict what kind of talent can cause success. What bristles me precisely is the assumption of determinism and not realizing how much luck or chance plays in the outcome. Little surprise that in get togethers of ex employees of an old startup that succeeded spectacularly before crashing equally spectacularly (and I was fortunate enough to have gone thru the journey) I stick out as a sore thumb when I point out that chance was a bigger factor in our success rather than somehow we had the most brilliant people in this earth and that we suffer from nostalgia when we wipe out all the failures we had on our way to success and then the spectacular burn out.

This book, if not anything, bolstered the basis of my thoughts. Did I mention, I love this book? 🙂 (Psychologists will call it Confirmation Bias 🙂 🙂 )

In summary, the book endeavors to explain how chance plays an outsized role in our personal and professional lives and of all the things we take into account explaining or predicting performance, that is the one thing we do not talk about.

Some quotes from the book:

1. When (Sports) teams fail, the coach is often fired. Mathematical analysis of firings in all major sports, however, has shown that those firings had, on average, no effect on team performance.
2. If the details we are given (of anything) fit our mental picture of something, then the more details in a scenario, the more real it seems.
(RR notes: I can see this in the postings of my Dem and Rep friends on the two Presidential candidates daily in my newsfeed)
3. Availability Bias: In reconstructing the past, we give unwarranted importance to memories that are most vivid and hence most available for retrieval
(RR notes: This is part of the startup recollection)
4. We associate randomness with disorder.
(RR notes: In reality total randomness is actual perfection – it can never be reached)
5. When we look closely, we find that many of the assumptions of modern society are based on shared illusions.
6. There is a fundamental clash between our need to feel we are in control and our ability to recognize randomness. That clash (of control versus helplessness) is one of the principal reasons we misinterpret random events.
7. Not only do we preferentially seek evidence to confirm our preconceived notions, but we also interpret ambiguous evidence in favor of our ideas.
8. “Chance is a more fundamental conception than causality” – Nobel laureate Max Born
9. We cannot see a person’s potential, only his or her results, so we often misjudge people by thinking that the results must reflect the person.
10. But ability does not guarantee achievement, nor is achievement proportional to ability. And so, it is important to always keep in mind the other term in the equation – the role of chance.

It is a hard hitting book. I had suggested this book to a dear Caucasian friend of mine. Whose reaction after reading the first couple of chapters was that it was a politically motivated book. Surprised by the feedback, I asked him to keep reading on. A couple of weeks later, I was getting constant text messages after every chapter about how he has completely changed his mind.

This book will hit you at some of your core beliefs. It dissects Caste-ism. The common misconception is that caste is an India thing. The author convincingly establishes that caste has been most prevalent – written in law, practiced but the people and enforced by the upper caste people in three areas – India, Nazi Germany and America.

The American reference was the most jarring. The author establishes how “race” was the way casteism was established in America. In fact, it quickly shows how the concept of “race” – as in white or black is arbitrary and makes no sense when you go outside of America. Did you know that there was a court case about whether Indians should be considered white or not (due to Aryan descent and what not)?

The reason for caste is neither feelings not morality. It is about power and resources – which groups will have it and which groups won’t.

Frankly, it opened my own eyes to Dalits in India. Growing up in India, we were never taught about how we treat Dalits. If anything, we were taught about how in the past “harijans” were mistreated. Today, reading news about the crimes against Dalits in modern India, I have a renewed understanding of the insidious nature of subjugation that casteism has wrought in a few societies.

Read this book only if you feel you are open enough to be questioned hard on some of your core beliefs. Else, give it a pass.