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The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Incerto #2)

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Goodreads Author)

3.89 · Rating details · 61,177 Ratings · 3,543 Reviews

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 everythin ...more

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Hardcover, 401 pages

Published May 15th 2007 by Random House (first published 2007)

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Jul 18, 2008 Nick rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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 certain difficulties, not necessarily strong 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 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. ...more

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Apr 19, 2008 Aaron rated it liked it

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 forward) as too 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 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. ...more

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Jun 21, 2008 rmn rated it liked it

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 the modern beliefs in stat ...more

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Jun 14, 2015 Jan Rice rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: psychology, audio, science-math

The first time through, I listened to this book with my husband, usually while I was cooking. Although I tried to stop and mark important passages, I ended up thinking the book was not very systematic. The second time through, chapter by chapter, the method in his madness is more apparent.

I continued to think Taleb is more a popularizer than an innovator. But even if so, that's not so shabby. He's trying to revolutionize the way we think, and the more we rehearse that, the better.

Nassim Nichol ...more

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Jan 26, 2012 Ted rated it liked it

Shelves: math, philosophy, psychology, economics, reviews-liked

Taleb is a pretty good writer, but I thought this was a very uneven book. As I read it I was constantly alternating between "Wow, that's a really great insight, a great way of presenting it" and "Gee, who doesn't realize that?", or even "That just seems flat-out wrong".

It's a book that should have been read by the quantitative analysts ("quants") working for the hedge funds and investment banks in early 2008; but it probably wouldn't have made much difference in the financial melt-down that foll Taleb is a pretty good writer, but I thought this was a very uneven book. As I read it I was constantly alternating between "Wow, that's a really great insight, a great way of presenting it" and "Gee, who doesn't realize that?", or even "That just seems flat-out wrong".

It's a book that should have been read by the quantitative analysts ("quants") working for the hedge funds and investment banks in early 2008; but it probably wouldn't have made much difference in the financial melt-down that followed. The problem with all their quantitative analysis was, as Taleb rightly points out, that it assumed that everything that could happen in the markets belonged to the domain of bell-curve events, and that hence probabilities could be computed for any possible market outcome. But "Black Swan" events (very rare, not even things we think about happening, and not linked to the factors that determine day to day market swings) do occur, they are of course unpredictable, and they can have massive effects. Some sorts of unpredictable events (such as unexpected conflict flareups, deaths of influential national leaders) are not Black Swan events because they are events we know about, and they are not really unexpected - only the timing is in doubt. Others, the real Black Swans, such as 9/11 and the derivatives bubble, have effects that play out over years.

But really, other than as a cautionary tale for those whose job it is to predict (unpredictable) things on a daily basis, these observations probably don't surprise most people who have thought much about the nature of reality and our grasp of the future. No one that I know owns a crystal ball. Without one even broad outlines of the future, that we believe are pretty certain, still have an element of risk/uncertainty; and perhaps a more significant element than we realize.

As the esteemed Donald (not Trump, the other one) pointed out, in one of his rare truly insightful comments, there are the unknowns that we know about, and the unknowns that we don't know about. It's the latter part of reality where the Black Swans live. (Of course, they also live in Australia, which is how the phrase got its meaning.) ...more

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Dec 21, 2007 Greg rated it it was ok

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 enough to filter his v ...more

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Oct 27, 2012 Mark rated it did not like it

Shelves: non-fiction

First, a disclaimer. I am, professionally, a statistician. I do not have a Ph.D. in my field because I feel that statisticians with Ph.D.'s are devoid of practicality and usefulness to the real world. I work at a factory where I assist engineers in better understanding how processes work and making things better. I generally feel that I make a worthwhile contribution to the world. I bought and read this book because it was critical of statisticians. I do not believe in surrounding myself with 'y First, a disclaimer. I am, professionally, a statistician. I do not have a Ph.D. in my field because I feel that statisticians with Ph.D.'s are devoid of practicality and usefulness to the real world. I work at a factory where I assist engineers in better understanding how processes work and making things better. I generally feel that I make a worthwhile contribution to the world. I bought and read this book because it was critical of statisticians. I do not believe in surrounding myself with 'yes men' in the form of books and actively seek to challenge my personal beliefs through the things I read and study. Also, the only fields of statistics that I have ever avoided are time series (forecasting) and actuarial science (incredibly boring).

NNT (as he loves to refer to himself in the book) is an idiot. Actually, he's worse than an idiot, he's a charlatan of the worst order. If I were NNT I wouldn't have to defend that statement at all, pretentious phonies reading this to feel intelligent about themselves would nod in agreement at the 'wisdom' I've laid at their feet. But I'm not NNT and I believe in substantiating otherwise baseless claims.

One of the first things criticized in this book is the narrative for conveying information. Yet that is all NNT does in this book is lay out narrative. No philosopher is quoted, no idea co-opted without some flourishing tale of how they were never appreciated despite their obvious intelligence or of how they were recognized for their genius but the cold, unending march of human forgetfulness relegated them to the annals of history until someone else rediscovered the idea and NNT bought the original book at a used bookstore in some non-American city that has an air of academia to it.

Later in the book, NNT makes one of his few cogent points (I'll chalk it up to luck on his part). Silent evidence is a major problem everywhere we look and in every field (sadly). The negative studies are almost never published, the failures are not chronicled, etc... The hard thing about silent evidence is that it's almost never available at all and we rarely recognize that we're not seeing it. Yet NNT frequently ignores silent evidence. He discusses casinos and all the money they put into preventing cheating (something that, apparently, comes from mediocristan and is easily predictable) but mocks them for doing so because the biggest losses they'd suffered in recent history had nothing to do with cheating. Apparently NNT failed to recognize that perhaps the systems in place so effectively prevented cheating that it was no longer a potential source of lost income. Perhaps if he had looked further back in time he would have seen the financial cost of cheating. It would be like criticizing a store for employing anti-shoplifting techniques when their biggest loses came from a lost shipment, a dishonest accountant and some other unpredictable and essentially unavoidable problem. The suggestion from NNT must be that dealing with the things we can is stupid and we should focus on the things that we cannot predict (and therefore cannot prevent).

NNT spends a whole chapter discussing luck and how every successful economist, banker, investor or other scalable professional is successful not due to skill, but to luck. I'm not going to debate that as the entire premise renders coherent arguments null and void (you cannot disprove the assertion that someone is chronically lucky, well played NNT). However, this luck doesn't apply to his favorite philosophers. NNT spends a chapter lauding Poincare for being a 'thinking mathematician' because he didn't rely on rigor, but rather intuition. NNT lambastes other mathematicians for criticizing Poincare by calling his techniques 'hand waving' which he decides is due to childishness on the part of the other 'nerd' mathematicians. But success due to intuition is not success due to skill and is therefore not success to be recognized or rewarded (at least, that's the case with bankers and investors). NNT doesn't understand the reason why mathematicians and other 'hard' scientists don't like hand waving is because there's no way to know if it's success or luck, it isn't repeatable and it isn't verifiable. Also, NNT ignores the silent evidence of intuition. He looks to Poincare as a savior and steward of his profession while ignoring the unmarked graves of all the other 'thinking mathematicians' who failed miserably in their intuitive hand waving.

For all of his experimental 'proof' offered in defense of claims about how we understand, learn and process things, NNT never gives more than one study as evidence (although he will claim, without a footnote or other reference) that many other studies have verified that particular claim. He accepts these theories as facts and bases large portions of his argument upon them, yet he criticizes doctors, biologists and other scientists for using experimental evidence to make theories on why things work instead of simply accepting that they do work. How many times does he bring up 'anchoring' as a theory for why things happen, yet he cannot accept the fact that perhaps birds and humans use different brain regions to perform similar tasks?

NNT at one point is criticizing the models that trader and economists have made to predict the stock market and quotes a study that compared the model's performance to that of the naive model (today's value is my guess for tomorrow) which concluded that, "statistically sophisticated or complex models DO NOT NECESSARILY provide more accurate forecasts than simpler ones" (page 154, emphasis added). The study didn't prove that complex models are no different from simple ones, just that not all of them were better (but no claim that they were ever worse). So why would I get rid of something that doesn't do worse but could do better? If I buy a lottery ticket that is guaranteed to make me my money back and could make me more than what I paid, why wouldn't I buy it? Now, I understand that predicting the future is foolhardy, and I'm not saying that it's something we should put a lot of stock into (pun intended) but past information can give us a general idea about the future, even if it doesn't give us a great one.

NNT passes himself off as some cool headed, rational thinker who sees beyond the noise and chaos of the world and invites the world to join him on the greener side of the pasture. But nearly all of his arguments are based on contradictions with other arguments that he has made. Further, the remaining arguments that are defensible are impossible to disprove because they impossible to prove. Much like a believing person who argues that without empirical proof of man evolving from lower life or of the big bang, the scientist cannot be right, NNT argues that because models are not perfect, no one can use them to any benefit.

The book is altogether too long given the core point of the book which is this: the most important things that happen (or that don't happen) are unknowable. Because we cannot predict the future with certainty or even near certainty, we should not even try but rather just do whatever the heck we want because sometimes it's just as good. ...more

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Jul 17, 2008 Will rated it it was ok

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 are, as societies, unaware of its impa ...more

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Aug 23, 2008 Daniel rated it it was ok

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

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Mar 08, 2008 Ben rated it did not like it

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 a metaphor for w ...more

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About Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Taleb has devoted his life to problems of uncertainty, probability, and knowledge. He spent two decades as a trader before becoming a philosophical essayist and academic researcher in probability theory. Although he now spends most of his time either working in intense seclusion in his study, or as a flâneur meditating in cafés across the planet, he is currently Distinguished Professor of Risk Eng ...more

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Other Books in the Series

Incerto (4 books)

Books by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

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

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Trivia About The Black Swan: T...

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Quotes from The Black Swan: T...

“The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore, professore dottore Eco, what a library you have ! How many of these books have you read?” and the others - a very small minority - who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you don’t know as your financial means, mortgage rates and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menancingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.” — 253 likes

“It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers.” — 167 likes

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