The author's notion of rare events and his decision to focus on them and attempt to invest in them also serves to support his thesis, that what people commonly attribute to their own efforts is really just randomness. By choosing to invest in this counter-intuitive way, Taleb is acknowledging the fact that there is really little he or anyone else can do to make a good investment, so he is therefore looking for investments that most people would consider 'bad', and which will be good for him if they pay off. More importantly, this particular strategy actually encompasses many of the concepts that he covers throughout the course of Fooled by Randomness. It actively seeks to exploit black swans and rare events while eschewing the typical trappings of survivorship basis and some of its antecedents, asymmetry, skewness, and induction.
Still, it is difficult to believe that all things can be solely attributed to the presence of fortune. Chance may play a significant role in the producing of desired outcomes in the financial world of trading...
However, there are some areas of life -- which Taleb does not explicitly discuss at length, that seem conspicuously immune to his theories regarding probability and randomness. Art would appear to be the most salient of these areas. One can certainly make a valid argument that artists typically have direct control over whether or not their art is revered. The Beatles prove this point very well. For a lengthy time period (at least the better part of 10 years) the four mop tops from across the pond churned out number one song after number one song, while spanning top-selling albums, sold out venues (before they opted to stop touring) and various merchandising ventures such as movies. Each of those songs they wrote that went over well with the public could not have simply been accomplished by random probability as well -- more than one member of the band was a gifted songwriter, and they were credible musicians and performers as well.
References
Taleb, N. (2004). Fooled by Randomness. New York: Texere.
