The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

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The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

3.70 · rating details · 8,669 ratings · 1,257 reviews

A black swan is an event, positive or negative, that is deemed improbable yet causes massive consequences. In this groundbreaking and prophetic book, Taleb shows in a playful way that Black Swan events explain almost everything about our world, and yet we—especially the experts—are blind to them. In this second edition, Taleb has added a new essay, On Robustness and Fragi...more

Paperback, 400 pages

Published May 11th 2010 by Random House Trade Paperbacks (first published April 17th 2007)

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Jan 12, 2008

Nina rated it

· review of another edition

It took a lot of willpower to not put this book down. This guy could have written a very interesting 5-page essay on his main idea, which is that people overestimate their ability to predict the future and that unexpected, extraordinary events - of whose occurrence we do not even know the probability, since the event is usually outside the realm of what we think is possible - are in the end what really matter. Instead, he took this solid (and unoriginal, I might add) idea, gave it a clever nam...moreIt took a lot of willpower to not put this book down. This guy could have written a very interesting 5-page essay on his main idea, which is that people overestimate their ability to predict the future and that unexpected, extraordinary events - of whose occurrence we do not even know the probability, since the event is usually outside the realm of what we think is possible - are in the end what really matter. Instead, he took this solid (and unoriginal, I might add) idea, gave it a clever name ("Black Swan"), created a vocabulary surrounding his idea that he hopes everyone will use (e.g. "Black Swan blindness"), calls himself a genius for coming up with the idea, uses the idea to dismiss and ridicule entire professions (statisticians, economists, philosophers, academics, civil servants, financial analysts...), calls himself an under-appreciated genius because no one accepts this "logical" extension to his idea, and calls everyone else - minus a handful of people, who he gladly names and boasts about the intellectual conversations he has with them - idiots. If his only flaw was his arrogance, then this book may be a little annoying to read. However, it is a combination of his arrogance, insecurity, and laziness that makes this book unbearable.

Let me explain.

This guy really needs to see a therapist and work out his insecurity issues before he tries to write another book. The book is littered with awkward asides to the reader that come off as desperate cries for approval. His overzealousness in ridiculing others who have actually made a real contribution to their fields/professions (Nobel prize winners are his favorite target) makes him come across as a failed academic. And he is always quick to note that nobody agrees with him because they "don't follow his Black Swan logic," in case you might take it as an indication that he might be wrong.

And even though he is quick to dismiss all of statistics and economics as "phony," he is too lazy to even learn the basic concepts that he claims should be thrown out the window. For example, he thinks you should never trust a statistician because statistical methods do not take into account "silent evidence." If he didn't fall asleep in statistics class (he said statistics was too dull to pay attention to in college, or something like that), he would know that it does take into account "silent evidence," it is called selection bias, and a good chunk of statistics involves trying to account for selection bias. He thinks the word "correlation" is meaningless. To prove it, he gives an example where two variables have different correlations at two different points in time. Which, to him, proves that correlations don't mean anything. He even uses spurious correlations for supporting examples (the correlation between children's book sales in the U.S. and fertilizer in China, and the correlation between NYC real estate prices and returns of the Mongolian stock market) so that the reader can laugh along at the absurdity of the concept of a correlation. Before he rails against statisticians and economists using statistics, maybe he should take an intro stats class?

I admit that his arguments make sense to me in terms of finance, which is where he is most experienced and knowledgeable. However, they fall apart when he tries to apply them to other areas, such as history and non-financial economics. Oh, and if you even think of not accepting his argument in its entirety, he'll remind you that it is because you are a coward and not intellectually consistent. (If you don't believe me, read p. 252).
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Jun 21, 2008

rmn rated it

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Shelves: financial-math-non-fiction

I can summarize this book in two words: Shit happens.

Actually, I should be more fair since the author spent 300 pages laying out his beliefs and arguing his conclusions. The real summary of this book should be: Shit happens more often than you think.

The author, Taleb, rails against economics, most philosophers, and the way we incorporate news to allow us to make sense of events and everyday happenings. He wants us to unlearn the way we think and learn, while destroying...more

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Aug 11, 2008

Nick rated it

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This is a great book. And, to take a page from Taleb, anyone who doesn't think so is wrong.

No, no, there are a number of problems with the book. A bit bloated, a bit repetitive. And NNT does make the misstep every once and a while. To take a very small instance, Taleb bases a short section of the book upon the idea that to be "hardened by the Gulag" means to become "harder" or "stronger" rather than its true meaning of someone who has become inured to ce...moreThis is a great book. And, to take a page from Taleb, anyone who doesn't think so is wrong.

No, no, there are a number of problems with the book. A bit bloated, a bit repetitive. And NNT does make the misstep every once and a while. To take a very small instance, Taleb bases a short section of the book upon the idea that to be "hardened by the Gulag" means to become "harder" or "stronger" rather than its true meaning of someone who has become inured to certain difficulties, not necessarily stronger because of it.

However, this along with other problems are mere quibbles relative to the strengths of this book (and, I think it's worth noting that many of the negative reviews on this site base their hostile reactions to Taleb on just such insignificant trifles.) The Black Swan deals with the fascinating topic of the nature uncertainty and approaches it from a variety of intellectual angles, mainly the psychological blocks that we are both born with and have created for ourselves that prevent our understanding of the improbable: the narrative fallacy and the problem of induction (the tenuous relationship of cause and effect); our reliance on flawed mathematical models; the expect problem. Each one of these discussions reinforces his main argument but captivate independently as they are insights to the way we process information.

Taleb also references numerous thinkers that are not as well known in the popular consciousness and provides wonderful anecdotes and examples from their life and work that illustrate his points and entertain the reader.

Many other reviewers comment on the Taleb's unique style: arrogant and aggressive. Just because he's arrogant, however, doesn't mean he's wrong--this man has spent most of his life dedicated to this subject and it shows. And his antagonistic style seems appropriate--it's hard to go against the establishment, even if your goal is truth; people aren't going to believe you. He attacks the Nobel Prize in Economics because according to him, the financial models created by the prizewinners that that Swedish committee has rewarded have done a great deal of harm to people's understanding of the true economic risks involved. Preposterous? Sacrilege? These are the exclamations of narrow-minded thinkers who have yet to examine the evidence thoroughly.

I, personally, found Taleb's style to be amusing and engaging. It reflects a true passion and dedication to the beliefs he expounds in the book, beliefs that are worth some attention. If we live in a time of uncertainty, it's a good thing to understand what that really means.(less)

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Jun 11, 2008

Aaron rated it

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Recommends it for: Zach

Recommended to Aaron by: Zach

This is a book that raises a number of very important questions, but chief among them is definitely the question of how the interplay between a good idea and an insufferable author combine to effect the reading experience?

This author is an a-hole. Full stop. He's dismissive, chronically insecure, unstructured and hostile towards his detractors. He engages in what may be the lowest form of rhetoric by pre-emptively attacking any critics (even before they've had the chance to come...moreThis is a book that raises a number of very important questions, but chief among them is definitely the question of how the interplay between a good idea and an insufferable author combine to effect the reading experience?

This author is an a-hole. Full stop. He's dismissive, chronically insecure, unstructured and hostile towards his detractors. He engages in what may be the lowest form of rhetoric by pre-emptively attacking any critics (even before they've had the chance to come forward) as too stupid or blinkered to follow his argument. He's contemptuous towards entire disciplines (economics, law, social science) without making much attempt to engage with the concepts he's critiquing beyond the broadest levels of generality. He's got a huge chip on his shoulder towards the scientific/academic establishment (especially the Nobel committee - try taking a shot every time he makes an off-hand, tangential attack on Nobel and you've made your Friday night). Worst of all, he's endlessly digressive, and couches his digressions in the language of capricious genius rather than simple bad writing (he hits the occasional sweetnote with these tangents, but if anyone else who has read this thing cover to cover wanted to put a bullet in Yvgenia, feel free to step on up).

He's hard to like.

It's unfortunate, because at the core of all of the go-nowhere anecdotes and borderline psychobabble is a good analysis on how people are psychologically and socially ill-equipped to handle unexpected outlier events (which he persistently, desperately refers to as "Black Swans", one of approximately 3000 new bits of not-too-essential terminology he's trying to appropriate for himself) and can't learn from our mistakes. It's a wonderful theory for a book one third the length of this one, and I'm happy to admit that some of the better moments were probably missed by this reader simply because of the exhaustion of filtering through the surplusage.

I am sure that the failure to give this book five or six stars (the possibility of a six star rating might itself be something of a Black Swan) is due to my own marginal intellect. The author has made it clear that any other explanation would be entirely unpredictable.(less)

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Aug 22, 2007

Adih Respati rated it

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Shelves: 12-contemplation, 05-sciencewriting, 09-economy

Black Swan, huge-impact improbable events (the success of google, attack of 9/11, invention of internet), shows that social sciences fail to predict various events (behaviors inculuded) by,and so far by merely , usingGaussian "bell curve" approach. The use of mathematics in social sciences overestimates what we know (observed past events)and underestimates what we don't (probable future events): too little science papers succeeded to make (near) accurate predictions; and successful inv...more

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Aug 29, 2008

Greg rated it

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This book has diminishing returns on the time spent reading it. Taleb's jeremiad is directed against - well - everyone who is not as enlightened as he is. I trudged through this book because - well - everyone is reading it and enlightened people should know how to comment on it. There, I did it. Now I can look down on all those people out there who aren't enlightened like Taleb. And now, me.

Taleb is actually on to something important if you can tolerate his self-importance enoug...more

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Dec 11, 2009

Dolly rated it

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Recommends it for: fans of Richard Dawkins, James Gleick, and Malcolm Gladwell

Shelves: 2009, afghanistan, english, germany, greece, france-french, italy, library, new-england, nonfiction, other-usa, scottish, turkey, russia, the-netherlands, religion-philosophy, africa, arabic, education-school

This is an interesting book. I like the idea of empirical skepticism, but I'm not sure that I will ever be able to embrace it wholly. I am not afraid to admit that I like patterns, I like predictability, I like stability...I understand so much more now about our erroneous desire to make things fit Gaussian bell curves, even when its inappropriate to do so. I will never read a mutual fund prospectus or annual report the same way again nor will I ever trust an economic forecast. But I think th...more

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Aug 08, 2008

Will rated it

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This review will be comprised of two parts: a review of the ideas presented and a review of the way in which it is written

(A) The ideas

There is no question here, Taleb is an erudite and intelligent scholar. His take on epistomology and the scientific method breathe fresh air into the subject and gloss it with some 21st century context.

It would be difficult for me to overstate the importance of the black swan problem in modern life and the degree to which we a...more

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Dec 09, 2007

Todd rated it

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Recommends it for: Nerds

I only read the first 13 pages of this book, plus the prologue, but that was enough. In the first few pages he name-drops people like Umberto Eco and Nabokov, tells us about people who were rather unknown five years ago (but forgets to tell us that they are still rather unknown now), and compares himself to people in history who are/were actually influential. For a man who claims he is not writing an autobiography, he really works hard to impress the reader. He adds little bits of information in...more

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Mar 01, 2009

nanto added it · review of another edition

Shelves: ekonomi-politik, langut-bersama-secangkir-kopi, nant-s-book, methodology-and-epistemology

nyari buku hegel malah dapat buku ini yang terjemahannya. ada beberapa kalimatnya yang menggelitik maka tertarik deh.:D

*sampe bab 1*
Ide buku ini menarik.

Black Swan adalah sebuah metafora yang pertama saya pahami dari kajian filsafat ilmu dulu sewaktu kuliah. Karl Raimund Poper menggunakan metafora itu untuk menjelaskan konsepsinya tentang falsifikasi. Di dunia ini, manusia cenderung percaya untuk mengatakan angsa putih adalah kebenaran. Keguncangan pada kebenaran it...more

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Mar 15, 2010

Bonnie rated it

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Shelves: nonfiction

This felt like it was trying to be the next The Tipping Point or Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything and just failed spectacularly, on all counts. Most importantly, perhaps, was that it was dull and a chore to read. In the little footnotes suggesting a chapter was unneccessary for a nontechnical reader and could be skipped (read: you are too dumb to understand this chapter, so don't even bother), like Chapter 15, I gladly took his advice because it meant one l...moreThis felt like it was trying to be the next The Tipping Point or Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything and just failed spectacularly, on all counts. Most importantly, perhaps, was that it was dull and a chore to read. In the little footnotes suggesting a chapter was unneccessary for a nontechnical reader and could be skipped (read: you are too dumb to understand this chapter, so don't even bother), like Chapter 15, I gladly took his advice because it meant one less chapter to slog through. I finished it out of a perverse desire to finish things, nothing more.

My biggest complaint with the book, though, was that the author came across as a giant tool. He loves to use sarcastic quotes to criticize things like "prestigious" institutions (despite mentioning multiple times that he himself attended the prestigious Wharton School). He also often makes unecessary--and often derogatory--asides in parantheses (I do the same thing, but I'm not a published author who has things like an editor and a paycheck)and snipes at newspapers, the French, Harold Bloom, academics, CEOs, MBAs/businessmen (but did I mention he attended Wharton?), the rich, the Nobel Prize, etc. Whether his hatreds are justified or not, the way he does it comes across as terribly juvenile and he never misses a cheap shot. He appears to see himself as some kind of persecuted genius, taking on the establishment. He loves nothing more than describing how some so-called "expert" goes apopleptic when confronted with his brilliant Black Swan idea (which he keeps reminding you he came up with at the age of 22) and fantasizes about dropping rats down overly serious people's shirts to watch them squirm (is he actually 12 or just a bastard? who knows).

Overall he comes across as arrogant, condescending, smug, self-righteous and incredibly pretentious, the kind of person you get trapped in conversation with at a party who will either goad and/or mock you for his own amusment or bore you with self-indulgent pontifications that include name-dropping obscure writers to impress upon you how smart he is.

He also seems to be something of a failed/aspiring novelist, as he decides to make up the character of Yevgenia Krasnova, a fictional novelist whose book was a Black Swan, something that no one wanted to publish but then became a huge hit. Why does he have to make her up? The publishing industry is littered with these people, it would be simple to use a real person. But not only does he make her up (and does not even bother to tell you she is fake until the following chapter) but he gives several pages to her biography, invents fake friends and THEIR biographies and then comes back to her AGAIN, all with no real relevance. These fictional characters could've been cut out entirely or replaced with real people and not affected the book at all. They are simply another one of his petty self-indulgences.

I could have saved time, money and my blood pressure level and probably been more entertained by simply reading the book's entry on Wikipedia. The central idea is good, but the execution oh-so-isn't. (less)

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Apr 08, 2008

Ben rated it

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Shelves: shit

If you skipped your Systems, Statistics, or Random Variables classes in college, or if you think you know more than everyone else on Wall Street, then read this book. It will reaffirm what you already know. To the rest of you: this book will reaffirm what you thought you knew when you were 5 or 6...with an updated vocabulary.

I put this book down after the first chapter, but thought I would give it another chance, that I was being unfair. When I read the second chapter (which is ...more

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Nov 26, 2007

Sabrina rated it

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Perhaps the problem was that I began with high expectations.

Taleb, who I presume can understand Arabic at its most elementary level, regularly refers to Muslims as \"Moslems,\" which irritates me to no end.

The book became tedious and self-contradictory at times, and I felt that it had an engrossing theory, yes, but it was poorly executed. The prose did not capture my interest, and his examples seemed to imitate (badly) the anecdotal style of Blink or Freakonomi...more

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May 27, 2007

todd rated it

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The Black Swan

This is one of those “must read” books that many more people will claim to have read than will actually slog through. Like with Fooled by Randomness, Taleb takes many more pages than necessary to get his important points across. Those points are that we have incredibly poor skills at estimating extreme events, we regularly abuse historical statistics in ways that set us up to fail miserably, and we should have a great distrust of most planning processes. The ultimate...moreThe Black Swan

This is one of those “must read” books that many more people will claim to have read than will actually slog through. Like with Fooled by Randomness, Taleb takes many more pages than necessary to get his important points across. Those points are that we have incredibly poor skills at estimating extreme events, we regularly abuse historical statistics in ways that set us up to fail miserably, and we should have a great distrust of most planning processes. The ultimate message is positive, however, since there are general guidelines on how we can do better (set yourself up for good extreme events while protecting the downside).

The style will either excite or turn off the reader. 90% of the parenthetical phrases and footnotes add little except Taleb’s (often snarky) editorials. Traders are sometimes described as people for whom the only thing worse than losing money themselves, is watching others make money. Taleb writes as if the only thing worse than him not getting adequate attention for his ideas is watching others get lauded. He clearly wants this book to be considered scholarly as he has 19 pages of notes and a 28 page bibliography designed to demonstrate the depth of his own reading. Segmenting the personal prose from its academic foundation may have the effect of improving the accessibility to the ideas within, but the reader should be cautioned. Any author who, in the acknowledgements, states “…[the book] just wrote itself,” and then thanks his editor for protecting him from “the intrusions of the standardizing editors,” has probably produced a verbose, tangent driven effort rather than the perfect prose he imagines.

If the style excites you, great. If it turns you off, try to work through it. The world is full of decision makers who rely on experts, statistics and intricate models that are built on soft sand. The risks they take affect all of us, and while this behavior will probably never stop, we can take steps to minimize the impact of their folly. Anyone who has been visited by a negative Black Swan will understand this implicitly. For the rest of us, the cost of this book will be a much lower tuition than we might have to pay learning the lessons first hand.
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Dec 28, 2007

Misha rated it

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This book is a weird mix of novel ideas, bragging, and pseudo-science.

Taleb makes a strong case for his theory of black swans. It's an interesting and valuable theory but it's also one that could be communicated in a short conversation and does not need a whole book to contain it.

Taleb fills the rest of the pages by bragging about his own success and ridiculing established philosophers, economists, and anyone else he can think of. I'm not in any position to judge his ...more

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Jan 13, 2009

Bernard Chen rated it

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This was my first encounter with Nassim Taleb. The writing has a hint of condescension that would be more irritating if his points weren't so interesting. This guy is either great to have at dinner or an arrogant ass. Probably both on the same night.

The basic idea behind the book is that the observational methods that underpin science can't prove the non-existence of an object/event. To make matters worse, human cognition is driven by heuristics instead of perfect memorization of ...moreThis was my first encounter with Nassim Taleb. The writing has a hint of condescension that would be more irritating if his points weren't so interesting. This guy is either great to have at dinner or an arrogant ass. Probably both on the same night.

The basic idea behind the book is that the observational methods that underpin science can't prove the non-existence of an object/event. To make matters worse, human cognition is driven by heuristics instead of perfect memorization of data, so we have a lot of trouble processing the probability or scale (the expected values) of highly unlikely events. We tend to think that things will continue on as they are only changing an amount that we feel comfortable imagining - we aren't capable of predicting the major shifts in history.

The definition of Black Swan events are that they are: completely unpredictable, huge in their effect (good or bad), and appear to be predictable in hindsight but really aren't.

A couple of examples of situations with unpredictable shifts in thinking:
Early Europeans thought all swans were white because they'd only ever seen white swans. There was no way to prove the existence or non-existence of black swans until they saw their first example.

Turkey's think they have great lives. Every day for 1000 days a farmer feeds them and cleans their cage. The turkey's impression of its life is accurate for 1000 days, but on the 1001 day right before Thanksgiving, the farmer cuts off its head.

Taleb really goes after people in the financial world who pretend that they can provide models of prediction. He targets the Black-Scholes model of option pricing in particular because it pretends to provide an estimate of value, but is really missing so many parameters that it's useless except to other people who buy into the model. As long as b-schools teach that the model is sacrosanct, and traders come from b-schools, then the system is internally consistent. Unfortunately, options (and stocks) will eventually go through an event not covered by the model and everyone who depends on Black-Scholes will have a surprisingly positive/negative event.

My main takeaway:
- invest in items that have positive black-swan ability with limited downsides. For example: startups can make disproportional profits, with losses limited to the initial investment. Movies and books behave similarly (some winners enjoy massive upside, all players can limit their downside).

I'm sure I've forgotten tons of info in this book since I read it a year ago, though.(less)

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Aug 23, 2008

Daniel rated it

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I stopped reading this because the author is so pompous and annoying.

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Apr 13, 2011

Loyd rated it

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Shelves: non-fiction

No, it has nothing to do with the Natalie Portman movie. Researcher Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan is a study of how unexpected, often tragic or shocking circumstances are the catalyst for positive change in the world. Here's the premise: an unexpected occurrence (like the discovery of an actual black swan in nature when none were thought to exist) jogs our thought processes, thus opening our eyes to a different future, for better or worse. I'm not sure every example in the book accurate...more

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Jun 18, 2008

Paula rated it

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Have you read a book recently that blew your mind every other page? Because that's what "Black Swan" did to me. Basically, Taleb takes everything you learned in Econ and Statistics 101 and throws it out the window (which made me feel better, because I didn't do so well in Stats).

There's only one main idea in this book: events in society are becoming increasingly random and unpredictable. We've moved from a world of averages to a world of extremes, and we have no way of gue...more

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Jul 27, 2007

Beth (M) mowry rated it

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Shelves: enlightening

This is a long discussion of why human events are so unpredictable. The Black Swan represents an extremely unlikely event (a black swan being thought of as genetically impossible) such as 9/11. The more unpredictable it is, the greater its consequences. The author grew up in Lebanon during its 15 year civil war and did a lot of reading while staying alive in basements ("war is extreme monotony punctuated by extreme terror") and it's understandable that he became devoted to the study o...more

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Mar 15, 2009

Atif rated it

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the books takes you on a very complex journey but at the end, brings you down to point one. One would say, why the hell did i went through the entire journey when I what I wanted to see could be verbally explained in one line...this book even though has some good things in parts but on the whole it portrays that all the theories of science, economics, business studies are rubbish and we should only focus on the so called greatest subject of philosophy.

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Dec 04, 2007

David rated it

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Shelves: read-in-2007

Nassim Taleb's earlier book "Fooled by Randomness" was enormously successful - deservedly so, in my opinion. Unfortunately, this second book is a complete disappointment. Despite its length, it adds very little of interest to the material in the first book. Much of it is a rambling and indulgent rehash of ideas already developed adequately in the first book. If you are looking for fresh insight, spare your money.

Taleb is a very smart guy. In the first book, he wrote fluidly...more

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Nov 23, 2009

Barnaby Thieme rated it

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Shelves: science, psychology

This useful book contains some key insights, but they are excessively watered down by Taleb's self-indulgent and too-clever-by-half yarn spinning.

Somewhere in his development someone obviously convinced him that he could only get his point across by telling stories, and this simplistic rule of thumb has gotten the better of him. The abstractions he represents are really not as complicated as all that, and are well-represented in our zeitgeist by prominent writers in fields ranging f...more

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Dec 25, 2010

Sarah rated it

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Shelves: favorites

Actually picked this up recently, and am trying to make it past the first few chapters. My biggest problem at this point is feeling like reading the whole book is really necessary when I feel like it sums itself up well enough in the beginning, pointing out what in sta...tistics is a generally well known principle (and is the basis for his whole theory) that the outliers will have the biggest impact and f-up your entire analysis of the stats you are working with. Economic gurus know this, of cou...more

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Jul 25, 2007

Tracy Van Dorpe rated it

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this book is causing quite the stir among economics departments and business school finance faculties (and money managers). it's like they have a visceral reaction to critiques of their professional assumptions. anyway, the feedback i got from an mit prof was that there's nothing actionable in his recommendations. as a complit person, what i found hardest to swallow was the rejection of narrative and how humans make the random universe reasonable. while taleb's argument on randomness and bla...more

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Sep 14, 2011

Wael Al-alwani rated it

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The book has a great philosophical and a little mind-twisting information about uncertainty and the improbable. It discusses how rare events have high impacts and that we are controlled by them, calling these events the Black Swans. The way we consider historic data to make decisions and forecasts is highly vulnerable to both the factors we cannot predict, and the factors we cannot measure. I was heavily involved in forecasting techniques and building basic/advanced mathematical models for forec...more

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Dec 20, 2011

Ahmed Daabel rated it

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Black Swan logic makes what you don’t know far more relevant than what you do know. Consider that many Black Swans can be caused and exacerbated by their being unexpected.

Think of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001: had the risk been reasonably conceivable on September 10, it would not have happened. If such a possibility were deemed worthy of attention, fighter planes would have circled the sky above the twin towers, airplanes would have had locked bulletproof doors, and the ...moreBlack Swan logic makes what you don’t know far more relevant than what you do know. Consider that many Black Swans can be caused and exacerbated by their being unexpected.

Think of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001: had the risk been reasonably conceivable on September 10, it would not have happened. If such a possibility were deemed worthy of attention, fighter planes would have circled the sky above the twin towers, airplanes would have had locked bulletproof doors, and the attack would not have taken place, period. Something else might have taken place. What? I don’t know. Isn’t it strange to see an event happening precisely because it was not supposed to happen? What kind of defense do we have against that? Whatever you come to know (that New York is an easy terrorist target, for instance) may become inconsequential if your enemy knows that you know it. It may be odd to realize that, in such a strategic game, what you know can be truly inconsequential.

This extends to all businesses. Think about the “secret recipe” to making a killing in the restaurant business. If it were known and obvious then someone next door would have already come up with the idea and it would have become generic. The next killing in the restaurant industry needs to be an idea that is not easily conceived of by the current population of restaurateurs. It has to be at some distance from expectations. The more unexpected the success of such a venture, the smaller the number of competitors, and the more successful the entrepreneur who implements the idea. The same applies to the shoe and the book businesses–or any kind of entrepreneurship. The same applies to scientific theories–nobody has interest in listening to trivialities. The payoff of a human venture is, in general, inversely proportional to what it is expected to be.

Consider the Pacific tsunami of December 2004. Had it been expected, it would not have caused the damage it did–the areas affected would have been less populated, an early warning system would have been put in place. What you know cannot really hurt you.
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Aug 04, 2011

Orr Hirschauge added it · review of another edition

Taleb's Black Swan has its fair share of problems. Quite a few parts of this book tend to step into the wrong side of personal, and its length is not equally balanced by its scope. To make matters worse Taleb spends the first 80 pages of this book stating the problem of induction. The books main problem though could be ascribed to something Taleb never actually puts into words but rather into style – the attribution of this book to the genre of 'Popular Science'. Economists jokes aside, this is ...moreTaleb's Black Swan has its fair share of problems. Quite a few parts of this book tend to step into the wrong side of personal, and its length is not equally balanced by its scope. To make matters worse Taleb spends the first 80 pages of this book stating the problem of induction. The books main problem though could be ascribed to something Taleb never actually puts into words but rather into style – the attribution of this book to the genre of 'Popular Science'. Economists jokes aside, this is not a popular science book – it is not wide enough in scope, and not as half as coherent and robust as works more commonly attributed to the genre (i.e., works by Dawkins, Penrose, Pinker and so on).

Most popular science books try using the accumulated wealth of knowledge in a doctrine in order to show the scope of implication of a simple theory. Like many popular science writers Taleb has a thesis. What he lacks is a doctrine. The plethora of facts and details are not the outcome of the theory in this case, but rather its crutches. Even worse is the fact that there is no real plethora here – Taleb tries to convince us that he roams freely between Economics, Philosophy, Mathematics and Cognitive Sciences, when, in fact, occasional name dropping aside, the philosophy is quite absent, the Economics and Cognitive Sciences do not form a coherent whole, and the math is nearly nonexistent. The miles long bibliographical list shows exactly that – Taleb can speckle his book with Cicero (in Latin mind you), Umberto Eco , Russell, and quite a few others, he may try to present himself as the tie-loose intellectual – but at the end these are all drowned in 30 pages long list of very strictly within disciplinary borders Economics and Cognitive sciences articles (and a bit of Networks theory).

The failures of this evangelistic book disguised as popular science, however, do not tell the whole story. When Taleb focuses on his life experiences he can be very perceptive. The few pages dedicated to the hardships of everyday life for long-term strategists, for instance, are quite outstanding both as a literary feat and as a robust psychological-sociological hypothesis.
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Aug 03, 2011

Ben Maguire added it · review of another edition

As i read this book a feeling grew in me that simply expressed the fact that i had been waiting for this book for all my post childhood life. Despite being on a subject that technically sounds dry and boring it is in fact the opposite especially as told by Nick N Taleb whom i wish to meet under whatever circumstances chance would give me, as his great personality and individual view point shine through every sentence of this book. It is a debunking book, of 'scientific' and 'mathematical' theori...more

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Mar 26, 2009

Neil rated it

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Shelves: mba, philosophy, logic

Okay, let's see if I got it straight...

An anti-academic academic weaves a non-narrative narrative about predicting the unpredictable into the theory that rigid theories are bad.

Oh, and count on things you can't conceive of happening happening.

Something like that.

Taleb's observations on the expectations and biases we hold, especially when estimating risk or uncertainty, are pretty dead on.

His key practical point is about the need for a ...more

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About Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Taleb was a pioneering trader of complex financial derivatives, and his first major book was a treatise for practitioners. He has since delved into some of the themes that he encountered in that "laboratory" to consider randomness, especially the the epistemology of chance events, more broadly, and his more recent books have sought to make connections between the financial and more gene...more

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Books by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Dynamic Hedging: Managing Vanilla and Exotic Options

Fooled By Randomness & The Black Swan: Two Books In One

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