The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable in 100+ Books in 2025

Feb 21, 2010 Bonnie rated it did not like it

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 le 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 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. ...more

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Aug 17, 2008 Dolly rated it liked it

Shelves: england-english, afghanistan, greece-greek, france-french, library, other-usa, nonfiction, africa, russia, 2009

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 that t ...more

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Jan 21, 2009 Jim rated it really liked it

Shelves: audiobooks-read, bill-gates-book-club, aaaa-libby

Revised to add this link regarding Taleb

http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_...

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I decided to listen to this once again as a BOT. Once you accept that he is smarter, more cultured , richer and has lived a more exciting life than you have ( he is and has)the book is good. The points are well expressed,organized and original . I haven't heard anyone give a good argument against the points in the book.

In my mind's ear,David Chandler (the narrator of Taleb's audiobooks) is Nassim ...more

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Jul 19, 2007 Ryan rated it really liked it

Shelves: philosophy, 100-in-2010, socialscience, science, history, essays

I've been digesting this book for a day or two, and I still don't really know what to say about it. Taleb is very intelligent and can write about difficult philosophical and epistemological subjects with ease, and he usually has the courtesy to bring you along with him. You know he understands what he's trying to say, but sometimes it seems like he's trying to say contradictory things. The book is a discussion of how people treat probability, risk, statistics, and prediction incorrectly. He mars I've been digesting this book for a day or two, and I still don't really know what to say about it. Taleb is very intelligent and can write about difficult philosophical and epistemological subjects with ease, and he usually has the courtesy to bring you along with him. You know he understands what he's trying to say, but sometimes it seems like he's trying to say contradictory things. The book is a discussion of how people treat probability, risk, statistics, and prediction incorrectly. He marshals his experiential anecdotes, fictional stories, theories, philosophical ideas, and statistical breakdowns in the main argument that we need to pay more attention to Black Swans. These are events or quirks in existence that are nearly impossible to predict, very important and impactful, and rare. His argument is that usual statistical models (the bell curve, Gaussian statistics) aren't useful because they don't take into account these rare and important events. This causes people to build their lives around safe assumptions of what will happen, ensuring they remain unprepared for Black Swans, which can be positive or negative.

I think it's an interesting argument, and he managed in 2007 to talk about the dangers of Wall Street ignoring the warning signs of a large collapse in the housing market and hedge fund/investment bank over-leveraging. That's an important insight, and I'd like people like him weighing in on how our financial sector should be organized.

My troubles with the book mainly reside in the organization - he meanders a great deal. At times he seems like he wrote it to settle scores and write wrongs by explaining himself to people he feels have slighted him (similar to Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion). I found myself noticing increasing instances of not-so-subtle digs at the French, Nobel Prize winners, most philosophers, economists, Wall Street traders, people who think they know anything, and anyone who's looked askance at Taleb's theories. Additionally, he veers between "we don't and can't know anything" and "I'm not saying we don't and can't know anything" as we speed through the book.

I got the point that narrow uses of statistical models are dangerous and panning out in the picture of reality is important. I got that a lot of "experts" are too focused and blinded by their dogma to be safely useful for dictating policy and research. I got that good ideas are often ignored, important events aren't predicted well, and history is often unexplainable. Skepticism is underutilized. But other than vowing to think critically-er, I'm not sure exactly what else I'm supposed to take from the book.

I'll still be ruminating about what I got from this book for some time, and I'm glad I read it. But I think it could have been a better book. ...more

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Jul 06, 2009 MsSmartiePants ...like the candy... rated it it was ok

The uncertainty and unpredictability of life. I'm looking forward to the promised mathematical and scientific reasoning explained in recognizing fraud, misinterpretation, vs. truth and reality. This is the oft-cited authoritative text on expecting the unexpectable! ...more

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Nov 11, 2011 Mark rated it it was ok

Shelves: non-fiction, gave-up-on, science

Conceptually interesting and if the book were required reading for a class; I'd probably be thrilled. For a leisure reading book, it falls a bit short of interesting enough to continue reading. ...more

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