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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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Seller: turbo_media
Rating:  475 reviews
Sales Rank: 396
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
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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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
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 donât 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 âimpossible.â
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 donât 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 bookâitself a black swan.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 475
 Quite good but a bit pedantic November 15, 2009
V. Verdekal (South west Texas)
I have downloaded many of his Youtube videos and read his book twice. The videos are good not great, however the book can become boring due to it being turgid. The basic idea is true but the meandering train of thought causes the rereading of many chapters and then you still may not quite get the point. Since he believes in evolution his theories all have a bias that negates many of his conclusions. Still I would recommend reading this book as it probably will cause you to look at data from a totally different viewpoint. Even if you already have this viewpoint it doesn't hurt to be reminded again that there is another viewpoint that most so called experts avoid and because of this are dangerous.
 "The Black Swan" is a practical joke November 10, 2009
David R. Fry (Albany, NY USA)
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
I'm somewhat suspicious that this book is an elaborate practical joke being played by Taleb. He's obviously a very intelligent man, an excellent and entertaining writer, and has an odd-ball sense of humor that is really appealing. So when I find after having read about 1/3 of the book that I haven't gone more than a few pages in a row without having found something that is factually incorrect or logically absurd I have to think to myself that it's all a joke. For example, even the title of the book is absurd as it relates to the alleged main premises of the book, and even then the main premises of the book are absurd and not born out by the facts. Black Swans are different species than the Swans found in Australia. In fact when they were discovered the concept of species didn't really exist as it does today. There really wasn't any reason why they shouldn't have named the new bird say, Honker, since if they really thought all Swans were white then a black bird would have to be something different. He claims that "Black Swan" events are unpredictable, carry a massive impact, and that after the fact humans construct explanations to make them appear less random. He also claims that these Black Swan events are the prime determinants of human history. In his words `History does not crawl, it jumps'. Then he bolsters his claim by trotting out a bunch of examples, none of which meet all 3 criteria. 9/11 not only was predictable but was predicted, probably will not have what I would consider a massive impact over the long run, and has certainly been explained conclusively as far as I'm concerned, and I don't know what randomness has to do with the explanation. How the hell could anybody call Google a "Black Swan"? It was just the best of a bunch of search engines. In fact it is a better example of the "Lucky Survivor" he likes to talk about elsewhere in the book than some of his other examples. The first 1/3 of the book is full of this nonsense. The one example that really kind of pissed me off is his criticism of the book "The Millionaire Next Door". That book was really intended to be "descriptive" as much as "explanatory" or as an "advice book", and what they found was that the typical person in the U.S. who had amassed assets in excess of 1 million dollars(1996 dollars) did it by spending considerably less than they earned throughout their careers and investing the difference prudently. If they did invest in something "risky" they only invested a small portion of their net worth in it and they made sure it was something that would pay off big if it panned out. In fact they invested their money in a modified version of Taleb's own 85-15 formulation!!! Their having amassed all those assets was not luck, as Taleb "claims". I just can't believe that Taleb made so many obvious absurd claims like this by accident. It must be a joke.
Good...but not as good as Fooled by Randomness November 3, 2009
Alex Ferrugia
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
The ideas presented in this book are essentially the same as those presented in Taleb's first book, Fooled by Randomness, just from a slightly different vantage point. That said, I found Black Swan to be good but you could get the picture reading only Fooled by Randomness, which I thought was the better of the two, if so inclined.
Pros:
- This book will make you keenly aware of the existence of black swans (both good and bad) in almost every facet of life -- actually maybe this is a con because it might keep you up at night.
- Taleb offers tools such as fractil geometry as a replacement for Gaussian distributions (however, still not predictive).
- This text and concepts covered are engaging and thought provoking.
Cons:
- I do agree with other reviews that the book was repetitive. Even more so after having read Fooled by Randomness. It is my suspicion that this book probably achieved so much success riding on the coat-tails of Fooled by Randomness.
Other thoughts:
- Some may find Taleb's irreverance and style abrasive, but I actually kind of like it.
 Thought Provoking Book November 2, 2009
J. Wilson
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I bought this book because I am an active investor and I had a little knowledge of Nassim Taleb. This is not an investment "stragegy" type book. It will definitely challenge the way you look at the risk and rewards/penalities of most aspects in your life.
While I loved the book, some of the chapters (Taleb warns the reader as well)are a little boring to read. Some of the discussion about philoshers from the 1500's and 1600's is beyond my level of interest. That said, they are still relevenant to the book.
Taleb does a great job illustrating the fallacies and the dangers of "bell curve" thinkers.
From investors standpoint I like this book a lot. As mentioned before there are no specific strategies, but the book will help you in your mental approach towards investing and understanding risk.
 In My Top 10 Books October 25, 2009
John G. Jazwiec (Chicago IL)
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
Though this book is not an easy read, it nonetheless must be read. The author explains that history is not as predictable as we think it is and it does not move linear but in fits and starts from startling events. The title is used as a metaphor. Everyone thought that all swans were white until the black swan was discovered. His most dramatic visual is a simple example of a two dimensional graph showing on the y axis satisfaction from a turkey's perspective and time on the X axis. It shows the y axis growing with time until - bang the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Taleb than asks the rhetorical question, "do you want to be a turkey". Risk is not an exact science, the author was a quant trader, and came to study why all of the risk formulas sometimes don't work and in some cases are disastrous - everything from the Stock Market Crash in 1987 to 9/11 - are examples when the "black" swan appears. This book was written before the Great Recession. After reading this book the reader can see that the "black swan" was an unraveling of a "white swan" - property values, though prone to local bubbles, would not go down for an entire country - in other words the "white swan" was a macro-economic model and when it burst everything changed. The rest of the book is very instructive in thinking about risk and again not being a turkey. Don't read it to your own detriment.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 475
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