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Already lots of reviews on this work but I have an additional thought or two. I would have liked to have given this book a higher rating but Dr. Taleb's incessant jibes at mathematicians, economists, those working withing the financial markets, and even biologists (!!!) gets VERY old VERY quickly. There are sections where every single page has some reference to this field or that which, in his estimation, is populated by nothing but the village idiots.
I can certainly understand him taking exception with those who have, at least once, steered us onto the rocks, but his beating of the same drum gets quickly stale. This book could have been a hundred pages shorter--perhaps a 20,000 word piece of long-form journalism.
He also drifts to and fro quite a bit in his writing. While I truly enjoy his erudition and a touch of the circumlocution, this work would have been much better served if he had kept to the task at hand.
There are a couple of redeeming aspects to his effort however. His admonition that it is better to prepare than it is to predict are wise words in any walk of life and here he frames them nicely.
Also, in the epilogue he lists his "Ten principles for a black swan robust society." These are wonderful admonitions such as society should not socialize the losses and privatize the gains. Capitalism is about rewards and punishments not just rewards is another good point. This short section is well worth your time.
I also liked his introduction to the reader of the concept of iatrogenics--making sure no lasting harm is done while trying to help.
This would have worked much better in 20K words and without the snide comments regarding others and their fields of study. I think an admonishment that fits here is the "play the ball not the man."
The first book that I read in the four-volume "Incerto" set by Nassim Kaleb was "Antifragile," so my reading of "The Black Swan" is out of sequence. However, I am glad that I came to it in its second edition, with footnotes addressing some of the criticisms made of it (tip: flip to the footnote as soon as you come across the symbol identifying it rather reading on to the end of the chapter where they are listed). While highly relevant to the dismal science of economics, it is far from a dismal tome. Some of the anecdotes will have you chuckling or even laughing out loud! It is a highly stimulating and entertaining book and will particularly delight those who enjoy the debunking of wrong-headed purveyors of elaborate academic theories that are not just useless but actually harmful. If this sounds like a book you might enjoy, be aware that the four-volume Incerto series is available as a set, something I found out too late to profit from the knowledge. I intend to purchase the other two volumes and recommend the set. His treatment of the devastating events known as Black Swans ought to be required reading for all who would like to avoid causing or experiencing them.
This is both an interesting book from the topic, how we tend to misinterpret and miss highly unlikely events, but also it is a statement to human resilience based on Mr. Taleb's history in emigrating from Lebanon. His views of the world are consistently positive and upbeat. Many of us could learn a lot from Nassim Taleb.
The book covers both the math as well as the narrative intuition for understanding rare events and why we tend to underestimate both their frequency and effects on our best laid plans.
The book is full of hundreds of great examples, and it is written in a very approachable style.
Whether you are a hard core statistician or just someone interested in statistics, this is a great book for you.
A must have read. Definitely get the second edition. The "postscript essay" is the most valuable part of the whole book. You have to slog your way through endless invectives in edition one, but the postscript in edition two ties it all together in a tight presentation. Excellent work that I came to through "The Signal and the Noise".
It's an entertaining book although the writing style leaves much to be desired. The main points are the contempt for any other called expert (any but the author who paints himself insufferable) in regards to the a priori information about models of the world and how one can be more open to the notion of outliers.
I am not smart enough to estimate the number of people who have been given the capacity to look at the world from an entirely unique and yet vital perspective, but Nassim Taleb is definitely one of them. The insights that come to him naturally, if studied and adapted by the average person into their own thought processes, would go a long way toward advancing the enlightenment of our species in general. When Einstein said that imagination was more important than knowledge, it may have been Nassin Taleb that he had in mind. That said, I do take issue with his final statement that implied that because our existence represents, in his opinion, a one in a 180-400 billion odds of our not being alive, depending on the sperm count of the father. Who says? Do we really know for sure that each of those 180-400 billion sperm are entirely and distinctly different from each other in any discernible way? Are sperm like snow flakes, each identifiably unique? What if every individual sperm was identical to the others in its group? Consider identical twins; two sperm, two identical individuals. And if triplets or quintuplets, or even sextuplets are seemingly different from each other, is it the sperm, or is it perhaps the ova that has introduced the dissimilarity? In the one case, a black swan no doubt. In the other, a very predictable distinction.
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