A nice, practical synthesis of the various criticisms of mainstream economic theory and the illusion/allure of predictability in general. Taleb also dishes out a lot of criticism of how economists are educated as well as economists in general--particularly those who appear to understand that not everything is a bell curve but compartmentalize that knowledge away from their economic work.

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. ( )

http://pro-libertate.net/20090717/82-read-black-swan-impact-highly-improbable ( )

Amusing, anecdotal, insightful, and for the first while, sparkling: the narrative promotes new ways of thinking about how foolish it is to predict anything. Taleb was certainly prescient (it was just prior to the 2008 financial crash): an amazing example of his "Black Swan" metaphor for predicting the highly improbable event, an outlier, an unnoticed negative "what if" aspect, to evaluating probable outcomes. Ultimately, we get the message, and I for one, do agree ~ that good research with appropriate mathematical models to predict a trend, a possible endpoint result, etc., can all be flushed down the loo if a Black Swan appears.

A diificulty with the story is that Taleb's theme repeats throughout most of the book, The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history, which I found tedious. After several side trips in his narrative, reader engagement fell off, even though the author's writing was itself very engaging. Despite the caveats, I do recommend the book quite strongly because in many fields of research, not just the world of finance, an improbability overlooked can ruin an entire hypothesis. Food for thought, indeed. ( )

When first read this was an interesting insight explored extensively in an anecdotal approach that became tedious. Revisit reconfirms this. ( )

'The subtitle of this book ('the impact of the highly improbable') underlines why it is so relevant to the current pandemic despite the fact that it was published in 2007. Written in accessible prose, 'The Black Swan' gives us simple tools for spotting the elephants on the world stage (and in financial markets). MK