---
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---

# Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (Incerto)

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## Description

Fooled by Randomness is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are The Black Swan, Antifragile, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes . Fooled by Randomness is the word-of-mouth sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world. Nassim Nicholas Taleb–veteran trader, renowned risk expert, polymathic scholar, erudite raconteur, and New York Times bestselling author of The Black Swan –has written a modern classic that turns on its head what we believe about luck and skill. This book is about luck–or more precisely, about how we perceive and deal with luck in life and business. Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in which luck is mistaken for skill–the world of trading– Fooled by Randomness provides captivating insight into one of the least understood factors in all our lives. Writing in an entertaining narrative style, the author tackles major intellectual issues related to the underestimation of the influence of happenstance on our lives. The book is populated with an array of characters, some of whom have grasped, in their own way, the significance of chance: the baseball legend Yogi Berra; the philosopher of knowledge Karl Popper; the ancient world’s wisest man, Solon; the modern financier George Soros; and the Greek voyager Odysseus. We also meet the fictional Nero, who seems to understand the role of randomness in his professional life but falls victim to his own superstitious foolishness. However, the most recognizable character of all remains unnamed–the lucky fool who happens to be in the right place at the right time–he embodies the “survival of the least fit.” Such individuals attract devoted followers who believe in their guru’s insights and methods. But no one can replicate what is obtained by chance. Are we capable of distinguishing the fortunate charlatan from the genuine visionary? Must we always try to uncover nonexistent messages in random events? It may be impossible to guard ourselves against the vagaries of the goddess Fortuna, but after reading Fooled by Randomness we can be a little better prepared. Named by Fortune One of the Smartest Books of All Time A Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year

Review: Immensely Entertaining, and Wisely Instructive Too - Taleb is one of a kind and has ascended to becoming one of my very favorite thinker-writers. This is partly because I've myself been interested in this subject matter (uncertainty, probability, risk, judgement, decision making, etc.) for more than two decades, but also because Taleb makes original and valuable contributions to the subject, and does it with an immensely entertaining writing style. The book is too wide ranging to summarize its content in a review, but perhaps the main lesson is that we humans are inherently prone to being irrational in various ways (usually without realizing it), particularly when it comes to adequately judging risks (and opportunities) and thereby making appropriate decisions in the face of uncertainty. We're especially prone to underestimating how often outliers ("black swans") can occur and how severe their consequences can be ("blowing up" in the case of traders). A corollary is that we often underestimate the role of luck (good and bad) in shaping outcomes, and instead overestimate the role of our decisions. Though we can't eliminate our tendency toward irrationality, we can at least be aware of it, and thereby deploy some "tricks" to help control it or compensate for it. My thoughts on this book largely echo my review of Taleb's The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable , and both books are similar in content and style, though The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable is perhaps a bit more flamboyant (in a good way). To be more specific: - Taleb is confident and may sometimes seem condescending, but his erudition is undeniable, and a strong case can be made for his iconoclastic brilliance as well. In a book like this, perhaps the usual modesty and humility don't make sense. - He's dismissive of those he disagrees with (even Nobel prize winners), and could be accused of oversimplifying their positions, but his criticisms actually seem to have a lot of validity, and recent financial events seem to have significantly (and unfortunately) vindicated him. - He often circles around his points, but his refusal to get right to the point pushes you to think more deeply about the implications of his ideas, rather than just quickly saying "yes, that's obvious, so what?" - His frequent digressions make it harder for the reader to follow the thread of his narrative, but the digressions are fun and many are quite insightful. For an open-minded person with an intellectual inclination, this can be a very gripping book. - I do think the more technical discussions should have been more clear and precise. I guess Taleb tried to "dumb down" the book to reach a broad audience. - Many of the ideas in the book aren't original to Taleb, but the way he's woven them together and presented them with flourish certainly is, resulting in the ideas having lasting impact on the reader. - His suggestions on investing aren't very specific, but this is a book about being fooled by randomness in general, not investing in particular. And Taleb's general advice to arrange safeguards against financial disaster, and also get exposure to potentially huge opportunities, certainly seems sensible. As with The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable , the bottom line is that this book is truly unique in its ability to intellectually entertain while conveying some deep insight and wisdom. Few people in the world have the right intersection of ingredients to produce a book like this, so we should cherish the fact that the book exists. Even if you don't fully agree with him, Taleb is worth engaging with. For readers who like this book and also have a strong interest in science, I also suggest Chance and Chaos by David Ruelle. Very highly recommended. In fact, ignore this book at your peril.
Review: Randomness Foolishness! - As stated by the author in the prologue, the main premise of the book is: "More generally, we underestimate the share of randomness in about everything, a point that may not merit a book - except when it is the specialist who is the fool of all fools...In my experience (and in the scientific literature), economic "risk takers" are rather the victims of delusions (leading to overoptimism and overconfidence with their underestimation of possible adverse outcomes) than the opposite. Their "risk taking" is frequently randomness foolishness." Below are key excerpts from the book that I found particularly insightful: 1- "I start with the platitude that one cannot judge a performance in any given field (war, politics, medicine, investments) by the results, but by the costs of the alternative (i.e., if history played out in a different way). Such substitute courses of events are called alternative histories. Clearly, the quality of a decision cannot be solely judged based on its outcome, but such a point seems to be voice only by people who fail (those who succeed attribute their success to the quality of their decision...And like many platitudes, this one, while being too obvious, is not easy to carry out in practice." 2- "It is a fact that our brain tends to go for superficial clues when it comes to risk and probability, these clues being largely determined by what emotions they elicit or the ease with which they come to mind. In addition to such problems with the perception of risk, it is also a scientific fact, and a shocking one, that both risk detection and risk avoidance are not mediated in the "thinking" part of the brain but largely in the emotional one (the "risk as feelings" theory). The consequences are not trivial: It means that rational thinking has little, very little, to do with risk avoidance. Much of what rational thinking seems to do is rationalize one's actions by fitting some logic to them." 3- "There is an important and nontrivial aspect of historical thinking, perhaps more applicable to the markets than anything else: Unlike many "hard" sciences, history cannot lend itself to experimentation. But somehow, overall, history is potent enough to deliver, on time, in the medium to long run, most of the possible scenarios, and to eventually bury the bad guy...Mathematicians of probability give that a fancy name: ergodicity. It means, roughly, that (under certain conditions) very long sample paths would end up resembling each other." 4- "1) Over a short time increment, one observes the variability of the portfolio, not the returns. In other words, one sees the variance, little else...2) Our emotions are not designed to understand the point...3) When I see an investor monitoring his portfolio with live prices on his cellular telephone or his handheld, I smile and smile." 5- "...It is not how likely an event is to happen that matters, it is how much is made when it happens that should be the consideration. How frequent the profit is irrelevant, it is the magnitude of the outcome that counts." 6- "...Brian Arthur, an economist concerned with nonlinearities at the Santa Fe Institute, wrote that chance events coupled with positive feedback rather than technological superiority will determine economic superiority - not some abstrusely defined edge in a given area of expertise." 7- "Causality can be very complex. It is very difficult to isolate a single cause when there are plenty around. This is called multi-variate analysis...People might ask me: Why do I want everybody to learn some statistics? The answer is that too many people read explanations. We cannot instinctively understand the nonlinear aspect of probability." 8- "I am just intelligent enough to understand that I have a predisposition to be fooled by randomness - and to accept the fact that I am rather emotional. I am dominated by my emotions - but as an aesthete, I am happy about the fact. I am just like every single character who I ridiculed in this book...The difference between me and those I ridicule is that I try to be aware of it." 9- "People confuse science and scientists. Science is great, but individual scientists are dangerous. They are human; they are marred by the biases human have. Perhaps even more. For most scientists are hard-headed, otherwise they would not derive the patience and energy to perform the Herculean tasks asked of them...It was said that science evolves from funeral to funeral. After the LTCM collapse, a new financial economist will emerge, who will integrate each knowledge into his science. He will be resisted by the older ones, but, again, they will be must closer to their funeral date than he." 10- "It took me an entire lifetime to find out what my generator is. It is: We favor the visible, the embedded, the personal, the narrated, and the tangible; we scorn the abstract. Everything good (aesthetics, ethics) and wrong (Fooled by Randomness) with us seems to flow from it."

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #6,061 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #1 in Business Statistics #1 in Statistics (Books) #144 in Success Self-Help |
| Customer Reviews | 4.4 out of 5 stars 6,539 Reviews |

## Images

![Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (Incerto) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51k+ZO5K1mL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Immensely Entertaining, and Wisely Instructive Too
*by C***R on June 12, 2009*

Taleb is one of a kind and has ascended to becoming one of my very favorite thinker-writers. This is partly because I've myself been interested in this subject matter (uncertainty, probability, risk, judgement, decision making, etc.) for more than two decades, but also because Taleb makes original and valuable contributions to the subject, and does it with an immensely entertaining writing style. The book is too wide ranging to summarize its content in a review, but perhaps the main lesson is that we humans are inherently prone to being irrational in various ways (usually without realizing it), particularly when it comes to adequately judging risks (and opportunities) and thereby making appropriate decisions in the face of uncertainty. We're especially prone to underestimating how often outliers ("black swans") can occur and how severe their consequences can be ("blowing up" in the case of traders). A corollary is that we often underestimate the role of luck (good and bad) in shaping outcomes, and instead overestimate the role of our decisions. Though we can't eliminate our tendency toward irrationality, we can at least be aware of it, and thereby deploy some "tricks" to help control it or compensate for it. My thoughts on this book largely echo my review of Taleb's The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable , and both books are similar in content and style, though The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable is perhaps a bit more flamboyant (in a good way). To be more specific: - Taleb is confident and may sometimes seem condescending, but his erudition is undeniable, and a strong case can be made for his iconoclastic brilliance as well. In a book like this, perhaps the usual modesty and humility don't make sense. - He's dismissive of those he disagrees with (even Nobel prize winners), and could be accused of oversimplifying their positions, but his criticisms actually seem to have a lot of validity, and recent financial events seem to have significantly (and unfortunately) vindicated him. - He often circles around his points, but his refusal to get right to the point pushes you to think more deeply about the implications of his ideas, rather than just quickly saying "yes, that's obvious, so what?" - His frequent digressions make it harder for the reader to follow the thread of his narrative, but the digressions are fun and many are quite insightful. For an open-minded person with an intellectual inclination, this can be a very gripping book. - I do think the more technical discussions should have been more clear and precise. I guess Taleb tried to "dumb down" the book to reach a broad audience. - Many of the ideas in the book aren't original to Taleb, but the way he's woven them together and presented them with flourish certainly is, resulting in the ideas having lasting impact on the reader. - His suggestions on investing aren't very specific, but this is a book about being fooled by randomness in general, not investing in particular. And Taleb's general advice to arrange safeguards against financial disaster, and also get exposure to potentially huge opportunities, certainly seems sensible. As with The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable , the bottom line is that this book is truly unique in its ability to intellectually entertain while conveying some deep insight and wisdom. Few people in the world have the right intersection of ingredients to produce a book like this, so we should cherish the fact that the book exists. Even if you don't fully agree with him, Taleb is worth engaging with. For readers who like this book and also have a strong interest in science, I also suggest Chance and Chaos by David Ruelle. Very highly recommended. In fact, ignore this book at your peril.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Randomness Foolishness!
*by O***H on July 19, 2013*

As stated by the author in the prologue, the main premise of the book is: "More generally, we underestimate the share of randomness in about everything, a point that may not merit a book - except when it is the specialist who is the fool of all fools...In my experience (and in the scientific literature), economic "risk takers" are rather the victims of delusions (leading to overoptimism and overconfidence with their underestimation of possible adverse outcomes) than the opposite. Their "risk taking" is frequently randomness foolishness." Below are key excerpts from the book that I found particularly insightful: 1- "I start with the platitude that one cannot judge a performance in any given field (war, politics, medicine, investments) by the results, but by the costs of the alternative (i.e., if history played out in a different way). Such substitute courses of events are called alternative histories. Clearly, the quality of a decision cannot be solely judged based on its outcome, but such a point seems to be voice only by people who fail (those who succeed attribute their success to the quality of their decision...And like many platitudes, this one, while being too obvious, is not easy to carry out in practice." 2- "It is a fact that our brain tends to go for superficial clues when it comes to risk and probability, these clues being largely determined by what emotions they elicit or the ease with which they come to mind. In addition to such problems with the perception of risk, it is also a scientific fact, and a shocking one, that both risk detection and risk avoidance are not mediated in the "thinking" part of the brain but largely in the emotional one (the "risk as feelings" theory). The consequences are not trivial: It means that rational thinking has little, very little, to do with risk avoidance. Much of what rational thinking seems to do is rationalize one's actions by fitting some logic to them." 3- "There is an important and nontrivial aspect of historical thinking, perhaps more applicable to the markets than anything else: Unlike many "hard" sciences, history cannot lend itself to experimentation. But somehow, overall, history is potent enough to deliver, on time, in the medium to long run, most of the possible scenarios, and to eventually bury the bad guy...Mathematicians of probability give that a fancy name: ergodicity. It means, roughly, that (under certain conditions) very long sample paths would end up resembling each other." 4- "1) Over a short time increment, one observes the variability of the portfolio, not the returns. In other words, one sees the variance, little else...2) Our emotions are not designed to understand the point...3) When I see an investor monitoring his portfolio with live prices on his cellular telephone or his handheld, I smile and smile." 5- "...It is not how likely an event is to happen that matters, it is how much is made when it happens that should be the consideration. How frequent the profit is irrelevant, it is the magnitude of the outcome that counts." 6- "...Brian Arthur, an economist concerned with nonlinearities at the Santa Fe Institute, wrote that chance events coupled with positive feedback rather than technological superiority will determine economic superiority - not some abstrusely defined edge in a given area of expertise." 7- "Causality can be very complex. It is very difficult to isolate a single cause when there are plenty around. This is called multi-variate analysis...People might ask me: Why do I want everybody to learn some statistics? The answer is that too many people read explanations. We cannot instinctively understand the nonlinear aspect of probability." 8- "I am just intelligent enough to understand that I have a predisposition to be fooled by randomness - and to accept the fact that I am rather emotional. I am dominated by my emotions - but as an aesthete, I am happy about the fact. I am just like every single character who I ridiculed in this book...The difference between me and those I ridicule is that I try to be aware of it." 9- "People confuse science and scientists. Science is great, but individual scientists are dangerous. They are human; they are marred by the biases human have. Perhaps even more. For most scientists are hard-headed, otherwise they would not derive the patience and energy to perform the Herculean tasks asked of them...It was said that science evolves from funeral to funeral. After the LTCM collapse, a new financial economist will emerge, who will integrate each knowledge into his science. He will be resisted by the older ones, but, again, they will be must closer to their funeral date than he." 10- "It took me an entire lifetime to find out what my generator is. It is: We favor the visible, the embedded, the personal, the narrated, and the tangible; we scorn the abstract. Everything good (aesthetics, ethics) and wrong (Fooled by Randomness) with us seems to flow from it."

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A Book Worth Reading More Than Twice
*by G***R on August 8, 2013*

Using his trademark aphoristic bent, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: "Arrogance in persons of merit affronts us more than arrogance in those without merit: merit itself is an affront". I've come to realize that some people find Nassim Taleb's arrogance quite repugnant, but, personally, I find it rather charming. I suspect that the same people who find Taleb's arrogance off-putting are the people who wish they possessed a shred of his erudition. Nietzsche was certainly on to something; it's hard to avoid being offended by your betters. I think I first read "Fooled By Randomness" circa 2006. Recently, I felt a longing to reread Taleb's first non-technical book again. Wow, what a wise decision that was! I actually digested more from the rereading than I did from the initial reading (and I digested quite a bit from the first reading). Both times, I focused on reading the book very, very slowly. Obviously, the fact that I spent the time to reread this book is indicative of how valuable I think it is. Known for his great wit, the baseball pitcher Vernon Louis "Lefty" Gomez was fond of saying that, "I'd rather be lucky than good." This phrase, in essence, is one of the central themes of the book. Although it sounds like a hackneyed platitude, Gomez, understood the role of randomness in our lives. However, due to myriad biases, we humans often tend to attribute our successes to our skill and blame bad luck for our failures. Is your rich neighbor or your boss really as skilled as she thinks she is? Parts of the book are also about the hindsight bias and the narrative fallacy. We humans are great at fabricating post hoc narratives about our world. It's how we understand (and misunderstand) the world, but we must remember not to take our stories too seriously. "A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact," writes Taleb, "but in the light of the information until that point." One of Taleb's favorite philosophers is Karl Popper. However, Taleb wasn't always enthralled with the man who espoused the beauty of empirical falsification. Prior to rediscovering the great philosopher, Taleb went through a self identified anti-intellectual phase early in his career as a trader. He feared becoming a corporate slave with "work ethics" (a term which he interprets to mean inefficient mediocrity). "Philosophy, to me," Taleb writes, "became something rhetorical people did when they had plenty of time on their hands; it was an activity reserved for those who were not well versed in quantitative methods and other productive things. It was a pastime that should be limited to late hours, in bars around the campuses, when one had a few drinks and a light schedule -- provided one forgot the garrulous episode as early as the next day. Too much of it can get a man in trouble, perhaps turn one into a Marxist ideologue." As they say, the dose determines the poison. Speaking of poison, another interesting idea that Taleb espouses is that being too attached your beliefs is poisonous. As he puts it: "Loyality to ideas is not a good thing for traders, scientists, -- or anyone". I like to think about it this way, there are times we shouldn't trust experts precisely because they are experts. This is because they are no incentives to be brutally critical of your own ideas. A scientist or a preacher who has built their career on a certain idea obviously has a lot invested in that idea. How likely are they to be critical of their own position when their livelihood depends on it being accepted? What if they are putting out pseudo-scientific nutritional guidelines that cause harm, but help them keep their job? According to Popper there are only two types of theories: 1) Theories that are known to be wrong, as they were tested and adequately rejected (he calls them falsified). 2) Theories that have not yet been known to be wrong, not falsified yet, but are exposed to be proved wrong. If you accept Popper's epistemology, like I also do, you can never claim that you know a theory to be true. In other words, we can only gain knowledge through proving that things are false. For instance, when I accidentally find myself in a theistic debate, people often challenge me to tell them how the universe came into existence. When I say `I don't know', they become infuriated. How dare I have the gall to dismiss some of their religion's claims as not true without projecting my own claim to reality? Yet, that's exactly the point. I gain knowledge through knowing what's wrong, not through making claims about what I think is right. So what should we make of Taleb's extreme and obsessive Popperism in a more practical sense? How does he recommend we apply to it our lives? I think it can be summarized in the following passage: I speculate in all of my activities on theories that represent some vision of the world, but with the following stipulation: No rare event should harm me. In fact, I would like all conceivable rare events to help me. My idea of science diverges with that of the people around me walking around calling themselves scientists. Science is mere speculation, mere formulation of conjecture. The following thought experiment really helped me internalize this message. Assume you participate in a gambling game that has 999/1000 chance of winning $1 [Event A] and a 1/1000 chance of winning $10,000 [Event B]. Using some straightforward calculations the expectation of a loss is roughly $9 (multiply the probabilities by the outcome for each event and then sum them) Which event would you bet on? I suspect that most people consider the frequency or probability in their decision, but this is totally irrelevant. According to Taleb, even people like MBAs and economists with some statistical training fail to understand this point. The magnitude of the outcome should be the only relevant factor in the decision. Think of a trader who focuses on event B, sure, he is likely to bleed slowly for long periods of time, but when the rare event happens the payoff is astronomical compared to the losses. Most of us, however, are schooled in environments that focus on games with symmetrical outcomes (e.g., a coin toss). The great psychologist and father of behavioral economics, Daniel Kahneman, also reminds us that we are loss averse and psychologically struggle with idea of bleeding out small losses for extended periods of time, even if there is eventually the opportunity for a huge payday. Once you realize that life is full of scenarios with asymmetrical payoffs, you're thinking (if you're anything like me anyway) will be permanently altered. In fields like, say, writing, the outcomes are asymmetrical. In other words, there is not a linear relationship with the number of hours spent writing and the amount of income one makes. One may spend a long time writing for free and then finally catch a huge book deal. For me, this is somewhat of a moot point because I'd write for free without any other justification other than the fact that it's fun and makes me happy. However, if all other things were equal, and I could also make money doing something I love, I would be very happy. Here's another piece of practical wisdom that I really enjoyed: "stay away from people of a competitive nature, as they have a tendency to commoditize and reduce the world to categories, like how many papers they publish in a given year, or how they rank in the league tables." These are the same kinds of people who think that their GPA reflects their intelligence. Or that the number of hours they spend running on a treadmill reflects their fitness. Or that their inherited wealth says something about their genetic fitness. Or that their expensive clothes make them beautiful. I could continue on and on, but I think you get the point. I often hear those around me complaining about how life will be better when they achieve "X". Alas, I'm human and guilty of making claims like this on occasion too. The trouble is that, for most of us anyway, we won't really experience long-term improvements in our happiness when we achieve "X". Throughout the book, Taleb devotes a fair amount of time alerting readers of what the literature in behavioral economics tells us about our irrational tendencies and biases. For example, there's the social treadmill effect: you get rich, move to rich neighborhoods, then become poor again once you compare yourself to your new peers. Then, you may work your ass off and get rich again, only to repeat the cycle. If you want to feel worse about yourself, then the best piece of positive advice I know of is to hang around people who are wealthier than you. I often try to remind myself that I'm living a life that is materially better than 99.9% of all humans that have ever existed and yet I still have the audacity to claim that I don't have enough sometimes. Pathetic. At one point in the book, Taleb writes: "I see no special heroism in accumulating money, particularly if, in addition, the person is foolish enough to not even try to derive any tangible benefit from wealth (aside from the pleasure of regularly counting the beans)". In other words, money is only valuable if you use it as a tool to extract enjoyment from life. If it isn't clear, I think he is making reference to the likes of Warren Buffett, whom people tend to see as being virtuous simply for the fact that he has been able to accumulate hordes of money. What I think many people fail to understand is that there is nothing virtuous about having money just for the sake of having it. How someone earned what they have tells you a lot more about them than how much they have. We generally tend to think that having money signals other traits about a person, but I'll remind you that there is a lot of noise in those signals (think inheritance). Having money doesn't necessarily signal any superior traits. Those who want to make a lot of money are greedy and shouldn't try to deny that motivation. Greed, however, is not necessarily a bad thing. As Adam Smith taught us, another mans' greed can create more wealth for society as a whole (provided the individual's wealth is ethically obtained). Do cigarette smokers understand probabilities? If so, how can they rationally understand the ills of cigarettes and yet be foolish enough to smoke them anyway? When I go for walks near hospitals I'm always surprised by the number of people in scrubs (perhaps some of whom are doctors and nurses) who I assume are well aware of how harmful cigarettes are, but smoke them anyway. Apparently, intellectually understanding something and being able to put it into practice are two different things. One thing Taleb also writes about is the selection bias in blogging and book reviewing. The cover of my edition of Fooled By Randomness has an excerpt praising Taleb as one of the "hottest thinkers" in the world. While I certainly agree, I couldn't help but smirk after reading that line -- can you say selection bias? Any book that is worth reading twice is worth reading more than twice. When you love a writer, you want to hear his opinion on just about everything. - See more at: [...]

## Frequently Bought Together

- Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (Incerto)
- The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility" (Incerto)
- Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Incerto)

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