If there is a single thing about science that we need to learn, it is to distinguish between the deterministic and the random. Many of the errors of human nature revolve around this point. We mistake luck for skills, and we attribute causes to events that have none.

The biggest part of the problem is that it is often scientists who have a poor knowledge of probability. They use a standard distribution - Gaussian distribution, named after the German scientist Carl Friedrich Gauss - as their basis, and they miss out on the far richer texture of the true randomness of the real world.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is author of Fooled By Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and the Markets (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA)). See his website.