The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable |  | Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book
List Price: $28.00
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Rating:  509 reviews
Sales Rank: 437
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 366
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.4
ISBN: 1400063515
Dewey Decimal Number: 003.54
EAN: 9781400063512
ASIN: 1400063515
Publication Date: April 17, 2007
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Product Description
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.
*2nd Edition, With a new essay: "On Robustness and Fragility"
Amazon.com Review
Bestselling author Nassim Nicholas Taleb continues his exploration of randomness in his fascinating new book, The Black Swan, in which he examines the influence of highly improbable and unpredictable events that have massive impact. Engaging and enlightening, The Black Swan is a book that may change the way you think about the world, a book that Chris Anderson calls, "a delightful romp through history, economics, and the frailties of human nature." See Anderson's entire guest review below.
Guest Reviewer: Chris Anderson
 Chris Anderson is editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and the author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More.
Four hundred years ago, Francis Bacon warned that our minds are wired to deceive us. "Beware the fallacies into which undisciplined thinkers most easily fall--they are the real distorting prisms of human nature." Chief among them: "Assuming more order than exists in chaotic nature." Now consider the typical stock market report: "Today investors bid shares down out of concern over Iranian oil production." Sigh. We're still doing it.
Our brains are wired for narrative, not statistical uncertainty. And so we tell ourselves simple stories to explain complex thing we don't--and, most importantly, can't--know. The truth is that we have no idea why stock markets go up or down on any given day, and whatever reason we give is sure to be grossly simplified, if not flat out wrong.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb first made this argument in Fooled by Randomness, an engaging look at the history and reasons for our predilection for self-deception when it comes to statistics. Now, in The Black Swan: the Impact of the Highly Improbable, he focuses on that most dismal of sciences, predicting the future. Forecasting is not just at the heart of Wall Street, but its something each of us does every time we make an insurance payment or strap on a seat belt.
The problem, Nassim explains, is that we place too much weight on the odds that past events will repeat (diligently trying to follow the path of the "millionaire next door," when unrepeatable chance is a better explanation). Instead, the really important events are rare and unpredictable. He calls them Black Swans, which is a reference to a 17th century philosophical thought experiment. In Europe all anyone had ever seen were white swans; indeed, "all swans are white" had long been used as the standard example of a scientific truth. So what was the chance of seeing a black one? Impossible to calculate, or at least they were until 1697, when explorers found Cygnus atratus in Australia.
Nassim argues that most of the really big events in our world are rare and unpredictable, and thus trying to extract generalizable stories to explain them may be emotionally satisfying, but it's practically useless. September 11th is one such example, and stock market crashes are another. Or, as he puts it, "History does not crawl, it jumps." Our assumptions grow out of the bell-curve predictability of what he calls "Mediocristan," while our world is really shaped by the wild powerlaw swings of "Extremistan."
In full disclosure, I'm a long admirer of Taleb's work and a few of my comments on drafts found their way into the book. I, too, look at the world through the powerlaw lens, and I too find that it reveals how many of our assumptions are wrong. But Taleb takes this to a new level with a delightful romp through history, economics, and the frailties of human nature. --Chris Anderson
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 509
 Applied mathematics meets philosophy March 8, 2010
V. Leonelli
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Dusted this masterpiece off and re-read it again due to the market uncertainties. Times like this everyone has an opinion, but no one has a clue. Taleb's unique background, being a student of randomness, a Wharton MBA, and a former derivatives trader at a hedge fund provides the perfect backdrop for analytical thought in moments of fear and sheer speculation.
These current chaotic financial fears breaths truth in so many statements he makes in Black Swan. I'd highly recommend people pick up a copy for keeping themselves grounded and reducing the urge to make rash decisions. The main thesis is to persuade people to understand the past does not predict the future - aberrations occur that destroy our deeply seated logic and certainty of the ways things should react to uncertainty, but suddenly don't.
All in all, a fascinating, timeless treatise from a philosophical point of view and market based one.
 A book that provoke your thought March 7, 2010
lnmlnm (Parsippany, NJ United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is very opinionated but it provide a lot of provocative insights, one of few book that shake your conventional belief on the subject of capital market.
 A little knowledge is a dangerous thing March 7, 2010
Robert Jeges (Melbourne, Australia)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Only a limo driver (without belittleing the trade) would use induction outside a formal system, or apply Gauss distribution to a single observation, although to be fair the author gives warning about reading chapter 15 with its confused discussion of the normal distribution. Overall entertaining and to be recommended, but not to be taken too seriously.
 A book too far March 1, 2010
Bookman (Woodbridge, VA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a book of 366 pages which tries to communicate the following thought: The future is unpredictable, and one big reason it's unpredictable is that unexpected events occur which are unforeseeable. These events are called black swans. If a good editor had edited this book, the book could have been cut to 50 pages. An even better editor would have cut the book to 10 pages. This book is essentially a one page magazine article for which Nassim Taleb got a book deal to expand the gist of the article to 366 pages. The writing is unfocused, wandering, disjointed, unconnected, and of a style one might call stream-of-conscious. This reviewer couldn't get through more than half of the book before he felt that reading the last half would be a boring, waste of time. This book was purchased through Amazon, and the purchase demonstrates the downside of buying a book based upon media reputation but, sight unseen.
Not for Cab Drivers February 28, 2010
GLK (OH)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Most of the people that buy this book do so to seek information to gain a larger perspective (advantage)? in life. However, most (myself included) are "cab drivers" not CEOs. When Puckish guys like Taleb who are obviously well read are allowed the luxury of a platform on which to ramble they make what seems a no-lose case for their cause. But they're not talking to us cab drivers, they're speaking to CEOs. To what end other than a potential trickle-down effect do regular folk hope to gain by examining his pearls before the swine? Not much, I'm afraid. His Optima fund is nothing more than a contrarian insurance policy the moneyed few can utilize in case of disaster in the market. I'm not saying that's a bad thing but it is hardly original. I am but the lowliest of the lowly and I've been saying for the better part of a year that hyperinflation may be around the corner. Am I some kind of genius? Hardly. In fact, even if many of the average Joes in this country know that their entire way of life hangs in the equilibrial balance of decisions made by self-serving morons they simply do not have the resources to do anything about it. In essence most of the people that buy and read his books are screwed either way. Then there are pearls such as the case he makes regarding the common intelligence test question (I'm paraphrasing because I don't feel like looking it up): "If all Zagrots are Zimbles then are all Zimbles Zagrots?" Then he delicately makes it analogous to a racial situation by implying that even though all of Race A may be Criminals, all Criminals are not necessarily comprised of Race A, then cheekily concludes that even those who know better will cringe when on alone on an elevator with a member of Race A. Hmmm? It seems to me that if I am to avoid a potential Black Swan event it would behoove me to avoid the elevator, right? And that's where all his books fall flat. They spend a lot of time criticizing our human foibles but very little time explaining what to do about them. Perhaps I could make a case for reading his books if I felt that, in some way, they illuminated my mind in such a way that they enabled me to avoid the pitfalls in thinking that seem to plague us all. He credits some of his own ability for abstract thinking from reading tons of books and becoming an aesthete. A rather impractical solution for us Cab Drivers. So all a guy like myself can derive from his books is a lengthy endorsement for his Optima fund. Except it doesn't matter because in perfect Talebian style the fund is closed to outside investors. It figures.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 509
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