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Loading... The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007)by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  
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  ) beckyrenner | Aug 3, 2023 |   ) pollycallahan | Jul 1, 2023 |  ) d.v. | May 16, 2023 | As other reviewers have pointed out, much of this thinking has been around for years, in some cases more than a century. Where the author stands out is in putting it into practice, and, of course, having written this book explaining it all. However, while Taleb naturally disagrees with this evaluation, I and others found him to be somewhat arrogant. I also agree with those who feel that the information could have been presented more compactly--though in the author's defense, he stated that he wanted to take time to develop some narratives around these ideas in the hopes of a more powerful presentation. ( ) qaphsiel | Feb 20, 2023 | davdittrich | Feb 14, 2023 |
 Since the book was written prior to the current situation, many of the insights will seem prophetic. For instance, “regulators in the banking business are prone to a severe expert problem and they tend to condone reckless but (hidden) risk taking.” Some might think that the book specifically predicted the current market and economic crisis—wrong. The book is about the expectation that it could occur. Some of his presentation is incendiary in criticizing economics, finance, and many of its most honored practitioners. Because the book is viewed as being partly about Taleb himself and because of the style of the presentation, some react to the author's persona. If you are forewarned and forearmed, it is easier to focus on the ideas in the book. Because the arguments are controversial, it is understandable that he has chosen to have sharp elbows in getting to the front of the stage.  Taleb and his publishers clearly believe the success of Fooled by Randomness is going to come again. But that book had a persuasive sobriety. The same cannot be said for The Black Swan, which despite the great utility of its insights is badly structured and hurriedly written.  "The Black Swan" has appealing cheek and admirable ambition, and contains such wise observations as: “We attribute our successes to our skills, and our failures to external events outside our control.” But the book exhibits shortcomings, the first being lack of structure. Belongs to SeriesIncerto (2) Is contained inHas as a studyHas as a student's study guideAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
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HTML:The most influential book of the past seventy-five years: a groundbreaking exploration of everything we know about what we dont know, now with a new section called On Robustness and Fragility. 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 dont 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. In this revelatory book, Taleb will change the way you look at the world, and this second edition features a new philosophical and empirical essay, On Robustness and Fragility, which offers tools to navigate and exploit a Black Swan 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. Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications, The Black Swan is a landmark bookitself a black swan. No library descriptions found. 
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The Black Swan
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