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The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

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Author - Nassim Nicholas Taleb ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Hardcover Book item from Random House was reviewed on 11-Oct-2008.

Search ISBN:1400063515 offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable Reference Book. Classifications : Management Management & Leadership Business & Investing Subjects Books General Business & Investing Subjects Books Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Circuitry General General AAS Human-Computer . Click the following link to view the cover of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.

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1) Hardcover Book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Random House.
Do you ever wonder if those people we call "intellectuals" actually exist? Have you ever stayed up late at night thinking about how everybody just seems to pull stuff out of their *ss? Maybe not. But if you have, Nassim Nicholas Taleb will give you a clear answer. These intellectual philosophy types do exist, you´ve just been looking in all the wrong places.

But The Black Swan is not about the existence of smart people. It is about our view of highly improbable events. Taleb discusses in depth the ineffective risk prediction models that are ingrained in our society. The scope of the book, however, is much wider than this. Taleb manages to pull in observations, studies, and biographies from our past to convey a simple and strong idea.

Imagine an assignment where you are asked to write one paragraph. The subject of your writing can include anything. You are allowed to edit the content and grammar of the paragraph once a week for ten years to make it as understandable and correct as possible. Taleb is so fluent and solid on each page you would think he used this technique throughout the book.

The Black Swan will cause you to think about everything around you from his perspective. If you are not comfortable judging people for being totally unaware of the world, do not read this book. A nice excerpt is Taleb´s ranking of intelligent animals (paraphrased): Humans, Wall Street Bankers, Dolphins, Apes...and so on.

www.andironblog.com¤

2) Hardcover Book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Random House. This high falutin´ author has much to say, but in the end says nothing.

Just randomly turn a few pages to obtain nice little quotes that sound good during CNBC interviews. The academics can use this book to justify creating another college course to charge kids $10k to "learn about". Or you can spout this crap at cocktail parties to appear intellectual.

This book is so pompous and overly-serious that it appears to be a classic American goof. Kinda-like Orson Wells doing "War of the Worlds", Minnesota electing Jesse Ventura, or McCain bringing sexy-momma Palin into the mix.

Read it and the jokes on you.

¤

3) Hardcover Book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Random House. I labored over a 2 or 3 star rating but ended up at a 2 since I decided to punish hubris in the wake of the Wall Street scandals.

The book is an interesting read but you have to keep an open mind and get past the author´s incredible arogance and condescention. He basically tells you that you and everyone you know are stupid because you do not think the way he thinks you should think. Some chapters have some merit and when he is not so busy telling you how dumb you are, he can make his point effectively.

One problem I had was the idea that many of his "Black Swan" events were actually unexpected. Events like 9/11 were actually predicted, not least of all from Ramszi Yousef, the man who performed the Feb 26, 1993 attack who said they would come back to finish the job. The 9/11 Commission report listed basically 10 things that pointed to the attack which if performed would have prevented it. Five were in the Clinton Administration and five in the Bush Administration (although to be fair, the Clinton Administration had a lot more time to actually learn the threat and do something about it since the first attack happened on their watch as well).

I have heard others say that the author´s previous book was more helpful without the biting sarcasm and self promotion.¤

4) Hardcover Book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Random House. This book is a path to open your mind to new ways of thinking. Anyone who deals with thinking should read it. Excellent book!¤

5) Hardcover Book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Random House. You must have keen interests in economics, statistics and philosophy if you want to enjoy this book. If you do however, this book seems elementary to surviving, or putting it more positively, doing well in this fast and treacherous world. You have to illustrate a lot of the theory with practical situations in your daily professional or other life to get the point or to make it interesting sometimes. Some of the author´s examples are poorly chosen; the "black swan" itself for instance: what was the big deal about the discovery of that bird? Certainly nothing compared to the dramatic events the black swan is supposed to stand for. WW I is another poor example of a black swan; the starting event was a surprise, but all the plans were ready. In summary: the book is 100% original and added-value, but could use a Bill Bryson make-over¤

6) Hardcover Book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Random House. 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.¤

7) Hardcover Book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Random House. 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 it’s 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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Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 8-Nov-2008, 14000635159781400063512, 4X0-590-3X0-770-300-190-151-KCB-1CB-8


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