Xysea 's review
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Xysea 's review
rating:
recommended for: philosophers, students of logic, chaos theory
status: Read in July, 2008
rating:
recommended for: philosophers, students of logic, chaos theory
status: Read in July, 2008
Okay, so how often do you read a book that changes your life, or your thinking?
This one did, for me.
"By a mental mechanism I call naive empiricism, we have a natural tendency to look for instances that confirm our story, and our vision of the world - these instances are always easy to find...You take past instances that corroborate your theories and you treat them as evidence.
"Why do we keep focusing on the minutiae, not the possible significant large events, in spite of the obvious evidence of their huge influence?"
"Black Swan logic makes what you don't know far more relevant that what you do know.
We act as though we are able to predict historical events; the simple truth is we cannot. Black Swans by their very nature are not predictable. Indeed, if 9/11 had been predictable, it very well might never have occurred because we would have adjusted our logic to include it and therefore make its happening improbable. Thus goes this b...more
This one did, for me.
"By a mental mechanism I call naive empiricism, we have a natural tendency to look for instances that confirm our story, and our vision of the world - these instances are always easy to find...You take past instances that corroborate your theories and you treat them as evidence.
"Why do we keep focusing on the minutiae, not the possible significant large events, in spite of the obvious evidence of their huge influence?"
"Black Swan logic makes what you don't know far more relevant that what you do know.
We act as though we are able to predict historical events; the simple truth is we cannot. Black Swans by their very nature are not predictable. Indeed, if 9/11 had been predictable, it very well might never have occurred because we would have adjusted our logic to include it and therefore make its happening improbable. Thus goes this b...more
Darwin once remarked that he had to be very careful to make a note of anything that seemed to undermine his ideas, because otherwise he knew he would forget it.
Interesting. There is a clear gap between what we know, what we think we know and how that all comes together...
I will make note of it...if only because the big picture is far more interesting that the tiny details...
Taleb is an extremely smart guy, with interesting and important ideas. That said, I thought his earlier book, "Fooled by Randomness", was an infinitely better - crisper, better written, far less self-indulgent rambling - exploration of the same intellectual ground.
What was particularly disappointing about the second book ("Black Swan") were
(i) the complete absence of any genuine new ideas beyond what had been in the first one; he really didn't have much to add to the excellent first book, but given its success, I suspect he and his publisher felt it would be a missed opportunity not to write a second
(ii) the success of his first book appears to have contributed to a definite (and unfortunate) increase in pomposity as well as a kind of smug, intellectual self-satisfaction*, which was unappealing.
*: When I was at Genentech, we invited him to come visit, and I ended up being his host for about a day and a half. He was an odd mixture of total charm and blindingly arrogant obnoxiousness.
But he does have some important points to make. Which I think did much better in
Fooled by Randomness
David,
Thank you. I think I'll check out Fooled By Randomness. Especially, by many accounts, it seems superior to this one.
