A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.
Why do we not acknowledge the phenom... (show more)
A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.
Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the “impossible.”
For years, Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. Now, in this revelatory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don’t know. He offers surprisingly simple tricks for dealing with black swans and benefiting from them.
Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications The Black Swan will change the way you look at the world. Taleb is a vastly entertaining writer, with wit, irreverence, and unusual stories to tell. He has a polymathic command of subjects ranging from cognitive science to business to probability theory. The Black Swan is a landmark book–itself a black swan. (show less)
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Taleb takes common wisdom and turns it on its head. He has followed up his terrific book, Fooled By Randomness, with this best selling and very wo... (show more)
Taleb takes common wisdom and turns it on its head. He has followed up his terrific book, Fooled By Randomness, with this best selling and very worthy book. I am finding interesting examples on every page. He refers here to Black Swan events, highly improbable occurrences that are unpredictable, carry a massive impact, and in hindsight we rationalize an explanation that makes it appear less random than it was. I have been interested in network resilience in our Highlands work, and he writes in The Black Swan of the danger of networked and tightly coupled financial systems. Networks have the ability to explode – they are scale-free, meaning that there is no upper limit on how much can be centered on one node, and the probabilities of hitting that node go up dramatically. This causes clustering and raises systemic fragility. In finance he worries, things are much more interrelated than they would be elsewhere, giving pause for concern. Taleb writes clearly that the bell curve does not explain the events we have to deal with and presents examples in a humorous way, sometimes scathing. (show less)
Once upon a time, Nassim Taleb wrote a fascinating book called Fooled By Randomness, which explored the concept of the black swan, an unlikely and ... (show more)
Once upon a time, Nassim Taleb wrote a fascinating book called Fooled By Randomness, which explored the concept of the black swan, an unlikely and unexpected but important event. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and genuinely appreciated the investment style that Taleb promotes as an alternative to the conventional style of making a little money each day and losing in extreme times. Taleb's strategy in effect buys insurance, losing a little each day (the insurance premium), but winning big in extreme times. I did glean that Taleb is arrogant, a fact of which he makes no secret, but he tells good stories.
Then, it appears he wrote the same book again, but this time called it The Black Swan. I couldn't make it past about 50 pages, because I felt like I had already read the book! If you've read one of the books, you don't need to read the other. (show less)
In one word: Overrated.
And in a few more:
I find that, above all else, self praise is Taleb's main agenda. Yes, he wants to 'educate' us on the dangers of the Black Swans, but he mostly wants us to know he's an autodidact, mathematician-philosopher with a disdain for scientists and neckties. He spends a great deal of time praising other mathematician-philosophers (subtley comparing himself to thinkers as Henri Poincare), and the rest of the time throwing insults at mathematicians, the... (show more)
In one word: Overrated.
And in a few more:
I find that, above all else, self praise is Taleb's main agenda. Yes, he wants to 'educate' us on the dangers of the Black Swans, but he mostly wants us to know he's an autodidact, mathematician-philosopher with a disdain for scientists and neckties. He spends a great deal of time praising other mathematician-philosophers (subtley comparing himself to thinkers as Henri Poincare), and the rest of the time throwing insults at mathematicians, the Nobel Prize, staisticans, and of course - economists!
If you ignore Taleb's extreme arrogance and narrow-mindedness ("if you hear a 'prominent' economist using the word equilibrium, or normal distribution, do not argue with him; just ignore him, or try to put a rat down his shirt"), you are still left with a very repetitive book. Taleb uses countless, lenghty, metaphors throughout the book to explain the same thing! If the book wasn't annoying, it was tidious, and if it wasn't tidious, it was, at best, unremarkable.
As for the Black Swan itself - Taleb did not discover anything new. The "Black Swan" is the same old Fat Tail, power laws have been around for quite some time (Pareto, Klieber, Zipf to mention some names), and the psychological effects mentioned in the book where examined by Cahneman and Tversky.
Taleb repackages familiar notions (within the Academia) and presents them to the general public as the "Black Swan Phenomenon". That's plain rude. (show less)
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How to start with such a complex subject? Let's start at the beginning, the title, which is quite frankly misleading, since the book goes more about how inept we are at predictning highly improbable events. Now, don't get me wrong, I completely agree with the author in that aspect but several problems with his book arise.
1. - He keeps going and going on about the same, our ineptitude to foresee future scenarios specifically regarding social sciences.
2. - He also claims scientists disreg... (show more)
How to start with such a complex subject? Let's start at the beginning, the title, which is quite frankly misleading, since the book goes more about how inept we are at predictning highly improbable events. Now, don't get me wrong, I completely agree with the author in that aspect but several problems with his book arise.
1. - He keeps going and going on about the same, our ineptitude to foresee future scenarios specifically regarding social sciences.
2. - He also claims scientists disregard this, which is moderately false. He also claims that prediction might be achievable in closed and controlled physical systems, which is also only partially true.
3. - He claims engineers are ignorant about the limitations of their science, which is entirely false, since we know that you just assume everything is going to work about 20% worse than expected, and hope for the best.
4. - Although he has abundant sources on the subject, I found, on a quick scan over journals, some more interesting articles about the subject, but again, no one gets paid for explaining that he can't predict anything.
For my part, the book is quite good, readable t the beginning, but once you got the concept, it becomes redundant, so you shove it deep within your bookshelf. It would be much better if it went into anecdotic style examples, in which one might show the prediction, and compare it with the actual results, together with a short explanation of which particular unforseen events led to the divergence between both scenarios. He could also do the same for a prediction that actually met the results, and explain the unforeseen events that led to both being similar (of which, I am sure, will also be enough).
If you want my opinion, try a different book on the subject, but on the unforseen event that you don't care and buy it, you will probably enjoy it for a while until it becomes rightout dull. (show less)
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Repetitive?
Philosophy, Finance, Economics, Uncertainty, Psychology...
Let me first say I think the Black Swan is incredible, on many different levels. However, I have heard many reviews from friends, online, etc. that say I agree with his point, but spends way to long repeating the point throughout the book and its repetitive.
I couldn't disagree more. Although his main idea is relatively simple he takes it in so many different directions to explain so many events its incredible. The second time I read through the book it was like reading it for the first time, with such a better grasp of all his rants (which I love).
I feel like people who don't like the book perhaps don't fully understand it? If his idea is so simple (and true) why doesn't anyone that runs our businesses, schools, government etc. actually embrace it? His book has taken my intelligence beyond any level than anything else I have read, AND he personally responded to my e-mail.
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