Taken in this light 'bullish' or 'bearish' are hollow words because in the realm of randomness the factor of random reigns supreme. The argument is predicated on the factor of randomness or chance where probability calls the shots. While agreeing that chance favours the prepared and conventional values of persistence, perseverance and skill, the dialectic polemic is biased to the random environment. There exists a dichotomy between skill and chance. Skill, for example, in surgery, is acknowledged but in other areas of endeavour, it counts for less as these areas are seen as highly random environments.

The advice is to cultivate intellectual insecurity in place of intellectual confidence. There must be the courage to purge the mind of the tradition (mindset) of intellectual certainties. Probability becomes the pivot around which gyrates acceptance of the lack of certainty. It matters not how sophisticated the choice, or how successful the frequency of overcoming odds, because at the end of the day randomness has the last word. The human brain is antithetic to non-linearity, in the sense, where if two variables are causally linked, in continuity, a steady input of one parameter should always yield a result in the other, which need not be true.

There are jobs that require skills and there are others where one can get away with luck. A surgeon needs skill. A production worker or a chef needs skill. Repetitiveness is the key to a revelation of skill. A chief executive is judged on process and result, where such a person makes a small number of large decisions, which are not repeatable. The nexus between the CEO and the results of the company, it is argued, are tenuous or nebulous. For this tenuity the CEO receives a high remuneration.

Professor Nicholas Taleb, professor in Science of Uncertainty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, wrote the book 'Fooled by Randomness - The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and the Markets'. It is something like the 'Invisible Hand' in economics. If randomness has the last word, this begs the question of, is very high remuneration for decision makers equitable? Going on the dissertation of Professor Taleb, how does probability stand vis-a-vis certainty? Does probability discard its uncertainty when a responsible inference is made leading to a decision? Does it then become a certainty? Is chance or randomness obliterated and replaced by certainty,or is certainty cancelled by the ever present randomness?

These questions have to be answered with regard to salary at the high levels. I remember Benny Hill saying, when man was created, spectacles were not invented. In view of this, God put our ears where they are. Because Benny Hill is of the genre of the late James Thurber, we take his observation of certainty with a different light, from that of Professor Taleb, whose research into uncertainty, carries a much heavier weightage. Be it as it may, the theory is interesting and, especially, in the light of the present lively dialogue on high salaries.

Dudley Au