The research based information on the psychology of marketing, buying and selling that are described in the first two chapters are little known, facinating and extremely useful for those at many levels. Detailed discussions of "decoys" in marketing products, the relative comparisons involved in almost all buying decisions and the incredible effects of "free" merchandise such as Amazon's free shipping are given in an interesting and engaging way. After that the impact and interest of the information declines with each chapter and by chapter 7 it is hard to tell what the focus of the book (audio) is. A guess would be that after chapter three it just goes on to whatever the author found interesting and researched.

The author, I think, is one of the great thinkers of our time. I enjoyed his work. On YouTube, there is a long interview of Mr. Taleb by an old guy. It was a disaster in that the interviewer has almost no knowledge about what what Taleb was talking about (including chaos, ...) and consistently interrupts and makes annoying noises. Therefore, I could only partially tell what Taleb was trying to say and I knew it was something important. Being unable to completely hear and see what Taleb attempted to say, I bought his book. Anyhow, it is not a technical book, it's fun with lots of history knowledge and intriging to read. I recommended it to many friends already.

Taleb could use a good editor, no doubt about it. Taleb's writing can be very entertaining and informative when he does not distract and annoy the reader with childish throwaway asides. On the other hand, these asides act as road-signs: When you find one aside too many, just skip the rest of the chapter because it is of no major consequence. When Taleb takes to his subject, he writes like an adult. :)

The subject matter, which could have been covered in fewer pages, is about the fact that the normal or bell curve does not represent reality in many cases and in these instances predictions based on a normal distribution will be wildly wrong. I found particularly helpful some pointers about our understanding of issues like "evidence" which may or may not prove your assumptions and "randomness" (not what you learn in a casino) which may be Gaussian or not.

The rest of the book is dedicated to various subjects such as the history of the Levant, not to be confused with the Middle East; a diatribe against the Nobel prize for economics; the academic pecking order; Taleb's travelogue including Rome, Paris, Sidney, Boston; and praises for philosophers and mathematicians Taleb happens to like including Mandelbrot and Poincare.

The reason for reading this book, if you are an investor, is to make sure you adapt your portfolio to the reality of Black Swans and avoid wrong assumptions and bad theories such as MPT, Black-Scholes, and Efficient Markets. If you are not highly leveraged then Black Swans will be less traumatic for your portfolio. Maybe Taleb should have railed against excessive leverage.

While Taleb does mention his dumbbell style of investing, don't expect to find an investing tutorial. He provides some clues but you will have to create your own unique style of harnessing good Black Swans and avoiding the bad ones.

Nutshell review - Although written in a slightly arrogant style the concepts, insights, and ideas expressed clearly show a highly intelligent and very well read author. Thoroughly interesting, thought provoking and well written book. Very worth reading.

Actually I love this book and can't get enough Taleb, mostly additionally, in the form of podcasts. I just couldn't help but posting a comment on the quality of the paper and the binding. Especially a book like this which is full of fascinating facts and figures you're going to want to put your finger on later, you might be inclined to highlight, right? The ink bleeds right through the paper to the other side. How frustrating. I buy hardbacks knowing that the paperback paper is too thin to highlight. Is this how it's going to be now? There are other indications of cost cutting. The binding ripping after one reading. Inside cover full of bubbles where the glue didn't quite catch. Especially with a Black Swan of a blockbuster hit, couldn't you spend the extra couple of cents to make a quality product?

If you ever questioned what your history teacher told you, you will find this book very interesting. If you ever hated grading on the curve, you will find out your were not alone. If you ever built a portfolio and it was perfect, and later you had asked yourself what in the world were you doing, you will find an answer in this book.
If you ever had to decompose a forecast at your work to get some alpha, beta, gamma, delta, or whatever Greek letter you like, you will find this book entertaining.
And if you did not do any of the above, just enjoy a good language.
P.S. I gave this book as a Christmas present to someone.

I read several chapters and had to stop because I felt I was losing my time in hopes that something interesting would pop up in the next paragraph. But it didn't.

There is nothing really original about the "black swan" idea. Not all events fit a bell curve, ok. Taleb claims that there are more black swan events than we think, that they shape the world, but we underestimate their impact etc. All of these are petitions of the principle. There seems to be no sound reasoning in the book.

Taleb is rightly critical of people who make induction from a few examples. But he makes inductions from a single instance, instead. In the discussion on "scalable" vs "non-scalable" work, he proves to have limited knowledge in economics. Maybe this is too severe : Keynes and Knight are briefly cited, and Hayek is discussed. Well, I will stop here.

I have fallen in love with stats stuff lately, and was hoping for another great read, but this one good not great. There is too much info that is not really related to much else and the pace is not good, I think the editor did a disservice and it could have been a better book. The author has great ideas and it got me thinking though and that is what books are for,

Some thought-provoking ideas wrapped in an insufferably arrogant tone. Fortunately, there are plenty of other options for books that cover these topics. It just isn't worth wading through Taleb's straw man arguments and narcissistic preening. As alternatives, I'd suggest Mlodinow's "The Drunkard's Walk" or even Taleb's earlier "Fooled by Randomness."

A little long -- there's really a single concept here and while it's important to relate to various endeavors, we get the point. But it's always erudite and entertaining along the way. And the main point is pretty important.

Kudos to the folks who rated this literary garbage "one star". Taleb is an arrogant, intellectual bully who contradicts himself several times in an disconnected diatribe that could've been shortened by at least 300 pages. Talk about needing an editor. Read this book at your own peril...but don't say you haven't been warned.

I thought this book was a really interesting read, but it wasn't one where you can easily see how to apply what you read.

For instance, the author does a great job of demonstrating how random life can be...for example, the stories about the true risks of a Las Vegas casino and the work habits of Onassis were really entertaining and made the point about black swans...but knowing that life is random doesn't really lend itself to knowing how to live in a random world.

The book can get a bit long-winded at times, but it's still well worth reading, especially if you're looking for something to expand your mind vs looking to make specific life changes.

The book reads like a web blog. he is a much more entertaining fellow on TV.

Taleb is an almost unbearalbe mix of arrogant and lazy. His ideas could be boiled down to about 10 pages, but he insists on rambling anecdotes to make his point. For someone claiming to rise above the rest of humanity with his visionary approach to history, his use of anecdotes as evidence is comical. Less comical but more serious is his wholesale invention of fictional anecdotes to support his theories. I want a refund.

There are some good points and some good perspectives in this book. None-the-less it is so filled with bile, acrimony and failed research that I came out stupider for having read it. The author makes up dozens of terms for things that already exist (e.g. "Silent Evidence" for what is commonly referred to as "Survivorship Bias"), rambles on for pages with personal diatribes and interjects fictional narratives as a truthful support for his points (one of which is that narratives are misleading).
There are better places to get the same information. Books that are better researched, better written and less smug. Read those instead.

This book was a profound, unique experience, from the first word to the very last word. B R A V O !

When I finished, I just wanted to start reading it over again. But instead I started Dr. Taleb's "Fooled by Randomness."

It was a Black Swan that told me about this book. I will never be the same. This book has changed me.

--Leah

A wonderful book on how the beloved normal distribution fails us when we use it to explain everything. It is well crafted, at times silly, at times playful, but always thought provoking. The writing is what you would expect if you had a favorite statistical philosopher over for a dinner and a few drinks: sometimes the ideas are overstated and enthusiastic, but that does not diminish the quality of the thought. This book talks about things we do not want to think about, and in the process encourages us to think about our own thinking as well as to question our assumptions about what "improbable" actually means.

not enough new stuff. recent research ignored. arrogant and condescending stick is getting old.

Taleb claims the book 'practically wrote itself;' what he really means, is that he just lifted some ideas from old philosophers and let Word do the rest.

The Black Swan provides an interested reader with important insights, no doubt, but they are nothing new. Indeed, possibly the most frustrating aspect of this book is how vainglorious its author is. He claims he felt 'vindicated' on Black Monday ... How? All Taleb has done is taken others ideas and repackaged them. While he was correct to believe them in the first place, there is little of the author in the book. Worse still, the author disregards his own rules. Early in the book Taleb claims that with respect to foreign affairs, the best answer is, "I don't know," (because there are so many unknowns it's best not to assume them away). A little while later, however, he goes on a tirade against the use of the phfrase "Hardened by the Gulag." Taleb claims that the Gulag did not harden the mobbsters, instead it simply selected teh most physically fit (because all others would die), who were also the most aggresive to begin with. Notwithstanding this latter assumption, he also implicitly assumes no psychological component was present; a clear violation of his 'don't assume' policy. While this is relatively minor (although extremely aggrivating given Taleb's hubris and constant patronization) it is a clear example of Taleb's consistent lack of vision. Moreover, he constantly uses inappropriate and verbose language (indeed, it seems the Taleb wasn't honest at the beginning, and instead it was the book, PLUS Word's thesaurus who wrote The Black Swan).

Readers, I implore you, save yourself some money: get some Russel, Hume, and Bacon out from your local library and bookmark an online thesaurus. Whenever you think you may want to read The Black Swan, just take any sentence from the above philosophers, pick AT LEAST TWO words and use the thesaurus to find their synonyms and from those, pick the largest everytime and replace the origional word. Now you will be, for all intents and purposes, reading the Black Swan.

So, you wondered why the "guru" wasn't all that good. Taleb explains - in clear and entertaing terms - why you should "make up your own" mind. I look at things "differently" now - I tend to be skeptical anyway - but I feel better about my decisions. I am encouraging others to get the book or at least make an effort to find out about "the other sides of statistics!" And the concept of a "Black Swan" is fantastic !!
A good read !! Marty Dowling

Ha! My clever title has nothing to do with my review (or does it?). Anyway, I found this book quite challenging. As I've said in other reviews, I am quite the layman when it comes to statistics and probability. But I think I got the gist of Taleb's concepts: we rely on flawed notions to make decisions or to view the world: the ludic fallacy; the narrative fallacy; the confirmation bias, etc. Foolish men (I don't think there is even one instance of a woman being mentioned, as either one who gets Taleb's thinking or doesn't) in expensive suits push on us a Bell curve from the world of Mediocristan, giving a false sense of security (and depriving us of potential big wins) in a brave new world where Black Swans - those improbable incidents for which we are impecabbly unprepared - have hugely significant impacts on our lives.

Taleb's is a mind deeply immersed in many disciplines. For those of us who spent our time in college waiting for Thursday to start partying, the subjects can be a bit challenging: philosophy, economics, financial analysis. But if you want to stretch your mind, take the challenge. There are profound and significant insights and learnings. Can I describe them to you succinctly? No. It will probably take me a few re-reads to fully grasp it all. Nevertheless, it's worth the plunge. In any event, I will forever be skeptical about any information backed up by statistical analysis.

For all the interesting stories, Black Swans has essentially the same message as Taleb's earlier book "Fooled By Randomness"; market prices do not follow a bell curve, and instead have a lot more unexpected extreme events. That said, most investment-related books tend not to linger on this issue, so Taleb is providing a reminder of something critical in markets. His style does come across arrogant, and judging by the bibliography (as well as the main text), he does want to show the world he is widely read. The stories are fun, but at times they are tangential to his thesis. The problem with reading his book is that it leaves one thinking that all investment returns come from chance. I find Mandelbrot's ideas of "gray swans" more appealing in that respect as it hints at the possibility of some skill. Taleb says he is a fan of Mandelbrot, so it would have been nice for him to explore this idea more. The book may not be the most inspiring for those involved in markets (we're all rolling dice), but a much needed reminder of the role of chance.

This is an excellent analysis of the limitations and flaws in
our thought processes about reconstruction of the past and predictions of the future.Once you see them with the help of Taleb,you're better
prepared to understand the world of events that occur around us.
He even has suggestions as to how to reduce those limitations.
Not always an easy read but fascinating.....

This is Taleb's follow up to "Fooled by Randomness." I found the lessons of both books to be important and instructive for both investing and, more generally, for life. Just like a Black Jack player who overvalues results ("lucky" or "unlucky streaks") and not the quality of play, Taleb teaches the philosophy of focusing on making the right probability-adjusted decision. Moreover, he teaches to evaluate decisions (your own or those of others) based on the info at hand at the time of the decision. It is easy to judge a decision based solely on results, but that is misleading as it does not account for the potential events that could have occurred but did not.

I found Taleb's philosophy compelling. Also, his direct, no-holds-barred conversational style is easy to read. He does ramble in places as he hammers certain points home. This is not necessarily elegant prose. However, the points are important and overall this is entertaining and instructive reading.

Taleb's main point here is that we should be extremely cautious about making predictions in nonlinear systems, as well as believing such predictions when we hear them. Unfortunately, most of the systems where we really want to know what will happen in the future are nonlinear systems--including all of human society, and the economy in particular. Taleb does a great job punching holes in the pretentiousness of "experts."

Although Taleb doesn't mention this, I would like to point out that the most accurate method known for predicting the performance of the economy is to say that tomorrow will be like today, next month will be like this month, and next year will be like this year. Of course this method of "prediction" is absolutely useless when something unexpected happens. And as Taleb's book points out, something unexpected always happens.

I'm giving this book five stars to apply what I learned about the dangers of staying in the middle. I think this book was written with the financial investment community in mind - and I learned some important lessons about mitigating investment risks - but that's not why I started reading it. I started reading it because I fully connected with the prologue - especially with NNT's commentary about how those who successfully avoid "Black Swans" are never rewarded for their success. We tend to glorify those who come to the rescue only after something catastrophic occurs, whereas there is no way to reward the real heroes - those who avoid the catastrophe, because we have no way to identify who they are. In fact, we tend to scorn them for making us do uncomfortable things that save lives by avoiding Black Swans. NNT's compelling argument made about a gutsy politician who may have taken a pro-active stand against the 9/11 attacks is what hooked me (on page xix). But unfortunately there was no further discussion on this, which I believe would be an interesting topic for any engineer, sociologist, or philosopher to continue with.

Other than that one disappointment, I am happy to have finished the book. I now see the bell curve and standard deviations differently and something potentially dangerous, whereas before I had not given it any thought. The parts written about good, desirable Black Swans are right-on and a fine argument against complacency. It puts you in control of your destiny rather than being made the victim while watching others around you steal the glory. NNT hits a home run in the final chapter by wrapping-up some of the details I had problems with earlier, which for me made the tough read worth while. Yes, we are all Black Swans.

This popularizer is a polemic on the platonicity of mathematical models, more specifically about their failures on taking into account of black swans. Black swans are the remnants consequential of the greedy reductionists' over simplifications of the reality. Black swans in summary have the following features: (1) rarity, (2) extreme impact, and (3) retrospective predictability. In the book the author has presented a plurality of ideas under the umbrella idea of black swans, together with a plethora of examples in various contexts. The arguments are terse, witty, pungent, occasionally offensive (to parties of vested interests and to other readers I suppose), fun and like the author's previous book "Fooled by randomness", worthy of re-reading. The author has done an excellent job in dumbing down technicalities for general audiences.

The book presents one novel demarcation (as stressed by the Popperian author, the demarcation is only an approximation for convenience) of randomness: (1) Mediocristan, and (2) Extremistan. Examples of Mediocristans are human's physical heights, actual weight of a minted coin, coin flipping, casino games, etc. Mediocristans are well taken care of by the traditional mathematical models and well established concepts relevant to the understanding of the traditional view of randomness, such as Gaussian distribution, standard deviation, statistical significance, etc. Extremistans, such as wealth, various phenomenon and statistics in wars (e.g. number of deaths), market behaviors, etc, are typically man-made or things that humans don't know much about. The author argues that as the world has become more complicated, it is moving deeper into Extremistans, and is less and less governed by Mediocristans. This change, along with people's ignorance of black swans, results in various phenomenon with significant impact such the surge of inequality (e.g. of wealth), the market crash of 1987 (in which the author has made a fortune), the S&L meltdown in the early 90s, LTCM's failure, or aberrant activities such as Gaussian delusions and applying flawed mathematical models to not so appropriate circumstances.

The nature of black swans can be vividly exemplified by the turkey problem coined by the author, a.k.a. the problem of induction. A well-fed Turkey could not know what would be happening to him on the Thanksgiving Day by inducing from how well he was treated in the days before. Like how the contemporaries of World War II couldn't realize the advent of event until after the facts. The problem of induction is an ancient philosophical problem first formalized in the modern epistemological context by Hume. Induction might be indispensible in the context of Mediocristans. However, it may fail miserably with Extremistans in the face of the "unknown unknowns", lest the probability of rare events is allegedly not computable. Experts who create mathematical models to capture black swans are said to be committing the Ludic Fallacy: believing that the structured randomness found in games resembles the unstructured randomness found in life.

The author uses black swans to explain the failure of the Efficient Market Hypothesis, the Modern Portfolio Theory, the misuse of science in the context of Sociology, Political Science, etc., the "theorizing disease" (relying much on incorrectly formulated knowledge as a therapy or consolation to ignorance and the stigmatic status quo of being not having control), the problems of heeding much to or totally relying on expert advices (e.g. a medical doctor might confuse NED (No Evidence of Disease) with END (Evidence of No Disease)), etc. The later part of the book discusses topics from basic binomial distribution to Mandelbrot randomness.

This book comes without much analytic data to sustain the author's hypothesis. Despite this, unlike many your-mom-is-a-female commercial books full of repetitive clichés found in the market, 'The Black Swan' is a well condensed tour-de-force and a convincing thesis that needs much attention. The author preaches against (1) naive empiricism (e.g. the meltdown of the Mortgage Backed Security market is a 'one in XXX billions' phenomenon), and (2) extreme skepticism (e.g. one believing in something with all the evidences pointing against it), and advocates beliefs in true and practical empiricism. In the author's word, he preaches practicality and does not want to be "a sucker in things that matter". He advises everyone to make decisions without being the turkey. The truth lies in realizing our limits and the understanding of the asymmetry of knowledge. The Popperian negative empiricism, a.k.a the certainty of falsification ("you know what is wrong with a lot more confidence than what you know is right") is the way to go. To be realistic, one needs to search for weakness in what he/she believes.

To those who are tolerant of the occasional bragging and nagging by the authors (some are indeed funny), this will be one interesting and memorable read.

One of the best books I have ever read. Should be required reading. Have given away at least 20 copies to friends.

The book starts well with challenging the readers to be skeptics about most everything. One should try to turn the pyramid upside down - the anti library, etc.
The author does correctly point out that power laws dominate several aspects of our life where we assume things to be normally distributed - stock market, etc.
It is also somewhat correct that we try to find causalities where we are not capable and thus draw incorrect reasonings.
But in reality the book should be no more than 25% of its original size. The basic idea is that predictions are not always correct. Labor makes little difference while luck is the real reason behind major successes - inventions, discoveries, serendipity.

Other than that, the author comes across as a real jerk - pompous, arrogant and foolish at times. His analogies do not hold correctly. One should not read newspapers because a newspapers are full of crap. Then he talks about rats under radiation and prisoners in Siberia and how they are similar. Rats are tortured physically and are thus weaker, prisoners are mentally traumatized and thus can get more dangerous. This is a well known established fact.

According to the author, we should be prepared for all the unknown - i.e. infinite number of situations and not for the known situations. He also warns how theories laden with stories and unnecessary scientific evidence and this is exactly what the author is doing though out the book. There are unrelated anecdotes like random thoughts through out the book.
It seems that he and a limited close circle are the smartest people who have ever walked the earth, while the rest have no idea what is going on.
Also information seems to have little or no value. Clearly he knows nothing about 'Kelly's Criteria'
The author continually criticizes 'quants' financial engineers since are supposedly so full of it. And what was he on the wall street?
I can go on about inconsistencies in the book. Please spare yourselves and if you really want, read one of the two books

Fooled by Randomness
Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street

I recently purchased this book off of Amazon. I am a long-time customer who has purchased many items, but I have never before been so wonderfully surprised about an item I purchased from the site. When the book arrived, I opened the packaging and saw the cover of "The Black Swan". I was keen to begin reading it so I started thumbing through the book. Something seemed amiss so I closed the book and took off the book cover to check the hardback binding. It too read "The Black Swan". So I continued to thumb through the pages. To my amazement, inside the book were the pages of "THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON" by Susan Jacoby!!

I have yet to begin reading either book (I ordered another "The Black Swan" which did arrive in proper condition) but imagine the linkage between the randomness proposition of "The Black Swan" and society's devaluation of knowledge and rationalization precept of "The Age of American Unreason" will be intriguing. Do we seek to rationalize otherwise random events because we no longer value knowledge in our society, or does our arrogance preclude us from prioritizing the accumulation of knowledge, thus leading to poor rationalization of events we experience? Hopefully I will get through both books soon to find out.

Nevertheless, the order was most fulfilling to me because now I have the definitive proof that you can't judge a book by its cover :)

Very interesting subject and worth reading, although the not especially well written and the author gets arrogant and annoying at times.

"The Black Swan" The Impact of the Highly Improbable" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a development from and a more complete exploration of the concepts presented in his first book " Fooled By Randomness." The Black Swan is more of a sequel that is somewhat detailed and deeply philosophical.

What is compelling and exciting is the theme of random chance that is highlighted throughout the Black Swan. Taleb recapitulates David Hume by demonstrating that "the observation of even a million white swans does not justify the statement that all swans are white."

Ultimately Taleb presents a fascinating blend of social science and philosophy and central to his argument is that the world is not governed by the predictable but rather by the random, unkowable and unpredictable. Taleb asserts that change comes in unpredictable spurts.

Even better when read together with "Nexus" a New Age novel about life transformation, with the pivotal transformative event being a random unexpected meeting with a significant person from the main character's past, and so the journey begins as the fascinating impact of the highly improbable surfaces.

Nexus: A Neo Novel

I became interested in this book after reading a review in the Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately, I had a very difficult time slogging through to the end. NNT should have stuck to his "day job" as a trader or hired a ghost writer, since he seems to have great difficulty in stringing together a coherent set of thoughts in prose. As one reviewer has noted, a 10-page article written by an accomplished journalist would probably have sufficed to communicate the key themes of the book. HOWEVER - I give the book 3 stars because of the subject material, which I deem to be thought provoking and worthy of further study. Key points made in the book:
- Certain natural processes, such as the height to which we humans grow, are very well predicted by the normal, or Gaussian, distribution, in which the probability of extreme values is exceedingly low.
- As a consequence, and due to certain failings of human instinct, we attempt to apply the Gaussian distribution to all manner of domains to which it should not be applied, such as world affairs, finance, and investing.
- The result is a gross and dangerous underestimate of the risks from extreme events, the "unknown unknowns," the "Black Swans."
- What does that mean practically? For one thing, for the individual investor it means that all those handy financial and retirement calculators that estimate your future investment results based on the average annual returns and standard deviations of various asset classes over the last 60 or so years are giving you a false sense of security. In NNT's view, there is a very real possibility of a Black Swan event that swoops in and blows up your hard-earned portfolio. Or in less dramatic terms, it means you may be eating dog food at age 70.
NNT pretty much leaves the reader to draw his or her own conclusions about the meaning of the Black Swan in their own affairs. There is not much investing advice in the book - NNT made his money betting on Grey Swans - highly unlikely but predictable events - not Black Swans. How do you place a bet on an event that cannot be foreseen? The salvation of reading this book to the end was precisely that it made me think hard about what the Black Swan means to me as an individual investor. My conclusion was that rather than modifying anything I am already doing, I needed to adopt a certain mindset. I need to be mentally prepared for the fact that there is a very real possibility that some Black Swan event could occur in my lifetime that completely wipes out the portfolio I spent the last 27 years amassing. If that happens, I don't want to find myself on a window ledge like many did in 1929. With that in mind, I resolve to do the following:
- Diversify my portfolio (done)
- Own my home outright (10 years to go on a 15 year mortgage)
- Eschew debt (always have)
- Live below my means and keep saving something (check)
- Stay healthy (trying my best)
- If the dreaded Black Swan does happen, be mentally prepared, accept my fate, and move on.

Not wanting to review an otherwise complex subject to which I could not do justice, while I found the tone and style a bit arrogant, after reading the book I couldn't help but laugh listening to the after the fact explanations by the so called experts of the mortgage crisis and the unpredictability, in advance, but "explainability" in retrospect of the same "experts". Taleb predicted there would be a Black Swan, and it was there. I thank him for freeing me from reading daily newspapers and watching the news on TV.

As good as Fooled by Randomness. I highly recomend this book, it is thought provoking and intelligently written. I makes you look at the world from a different perspective.

I thought I might learn something from this book so finished it in two days including the afternoon of purchasing it. It had a sharp pleasant start, then in the middle it became depressing and towards the end, there was light at the end of the tunnel - phew.

I did not feel that this book had anything earth shatteringly new, although Taleb emphasises his unique, totally unique grasp of the problem as if no one else had seen it before. Of course he does give a few quotes from the Bible, but then he criticizes so much. I can forgive him all his foibles and criticisms bar one. He shot the messenger at the start by saying that the Black Swan is an ugly bird. Why shoot the bird? The bird is an extrodinary, ornithological enigma and indeed as something of a naturalist, the title persuaded me. Taleb does not seem to have a high regard for the natural world and says we should not be too guilty about species extinctions ... Something else that irritated me was when Taleb describes an issue and then says "more on this is chapter X ahead". I could not always say that I held my breath with this prequel. I prefer to eat my food without having to revisit it again and again.

I learned about mediocristan and extrismistan and how bell curves don't help you make accurate financial forecasts. I learned about the "narrative fallacy" and just how bad our assumptions are about how much we know. I learned about bad Nobel prizes in economics and the importance of Mandelbrot and certain apparently vital French thinkers and philosophers including that science guru Popper. Finally, I also learned about Lebanon turning from hell to heaven and the tragedy of this all. This is my first book by a recent middle eastern intellectual - I don't normally read books from people in this part of the world if only because they have not written on anything that particularly interests me (leaving aside ancient history).

Taleb is a sycophant when it comes to the USA. I grant him that the USA is a marvelous country, but how about some objectivity about the debt crises that the USA faces and - if he must give us his opinions free of charge, some frank views about politics and religion rather than various intellectual asides?

It's clear that he presents himself and his credentials as a scientist, scholar, polyglot and humanist rather than a businessman and stock market professional. He likes to describe himself as a limousine driver - just to show that he does not suffer fools and would actually prefer to put his feet up with a good book.

The failings of this book is that Taleb's major philosophical rant - that things are basically uncertain has been the core of ancient religions and philosophies the world over. Leaving aside a Platonic fixity that Taleb uses as a bulwark to his arguments - a huge amount of ancient philosophical and spiritual rhetoric is about uncertainties ... and deep down we know the imperfections and the stench is unbearable. Thanks for teaching me not to believe in the experts - sincerely, but Taleb's veiled dismissal of others in the pre-modern age who basically knew it the way he says it - suggests a lack of extensive reading. Then again, Taleb is selective on his sources and only quotes from works contra his theses (? - something like that).

Yes we are victims of story telling - but actually it's worse. I don't think Taleb does justice to the apparent Socratic quip that "I know one thing and that is I know nothing".

Well, I'm not going to give up on chasing after the rainbow, but thanks for telling me it's a futile enterprise. This will certainly save me money - but don't let's forget that magic sometimes exists as well and luck could do with a fuller treatment, beyond that of chance.

A stimulating scientific exposition that many would benefit from. P.S., The Black Swan is a beautiful bird.

I would not recommend wasting you time on this book. It is a quite mediocre recital of what has been already known. A lot of trivia delivered with a pretense to be a revelation.

This is an eye-opening, sometimes jaw-dropping, intelligent and whitty book giving you a refreshing view of the world and life. It's thought provoking and may very well change the way you view life. A must read!
Ferd moved to Colorado.

The Black Swan is erudite, filled with interesting historical references, anecdotes, and theories. It's also very cynical, taking the view that there is a great fraud taking place because people cannot understand the world in terms of the extremes that modern society allows. Taleb's sense of humor and views on being well-read and intellectually curious sink well with my own.

Most of the ideas in the book are not new, although they are presented in a fresh way, and I think that new perspectives of old ideas are always useful. The main function of the book is not to present ideas like the disproportionate impact of improbable events but to show how ubiquitous they are and how academics and laypeople alike fail to see how things really behave in the social sciences, economics, and finance. As an applied mathematician in the field of prediction and uncertainty, I appreciate his understanding of power law versus Gaussian statistics and his practical, empirical approach. His discussion of the "barbell" method of investing was new to me and very useful both for investing my money and time.

All in all, it is one of the most enjoyable, funny books on uncertainty I have read. My picking it up (more or less at random) was serendipity.

There has been much criticism of Mr. Taleb's trashing of Nobel laureates, but like it or not, he accurately predicted Long Term Capital Management's (LTCM) demise; the same LTCM founded by Nobel laureates with their sophisticated forecast models and portfolio theories, ignoring the possibility of extremely rare events (black swans) that could potentially wipe out their business as it happened in 1998. And like it or not, Nassim Taleb has made a fortune in the securities market by practicing what he preaches, especially on Black Monday (October 1987). His signature investment strategy results in long dry spells capped by monstrous returns. "If you lose money on a steady basis and then make money in a lumpy way, people think you're crazy," he once said.

Mr. Taleb's model comprises an L shaped curve (fat tail in quant jargon) following the power law distribution, with rare occurrences dominating the outcome of important events. A "Black Swan" is, therefore, not only a rare event, but a most influential one as well. Taleb claims most important events that shaped our history were results of such occurrences. He has a particular disdain for Gaussian bell shaped curves, which he perceives as ill equipped to handle a world mired in extreme events he calls "Extremistan". Bell curves are for a hypothetical world he dubs "Mediocristan". We are programmed to make inferences quickly, with low tolerance for the unknown, owing it to our relatively primitive past environment when we worried about "new wild animals", new enemies and abrupt weather changes. Hence the tendency to fall into the traps of (summarized by DAVID A. SHAYWITZ whose review of "The Black Swan" was published in the WSJ on April 24, 2007):

"Confirmation bias (our tendency to reaffirm our beliefs rather than contradict them), narrative fallacy (our weakness for compelling stories), silent evidence (our failure to account for what we don't see), ludic fallacy (our willingness to oversimplify and take games or models too seriously), and epistemic arrogance (our habit of overestimating our knowledge and underestimating our ignorance)."

Mark Spitznagel, Taleb's chief trader, describes Taleb as "95% philosopher, 5% trader." Taleb's theories, however, apply overwhelmingly to the financial markets. If we accept the premise that most people are risk averse and look for stability and security in life more than anything else, the application of Mr. Taleb's theories would be limited to the relatively small pool of the world population interested in flying jets rather than driving BMWs.

Not only did this book not live up to the expectations I had for it, it was downright lousy.

A "black swan" is Taleb's name for an event that is unexpected, profound, and for which attempts are made to explain it retroactively. The book purported to be about why it is so difficult for us to anticipate such events, and presumably what to do about it. However, like The Tipping Point, the book never got beyond this initial premise and actually said anything. There wasn't much to disagree about in the book and the author shares my overall sensibilities about the random way the world works, but there were absolutely no insights provided, and nothing to take away.

On top of this, the author himself appears to be a certifiable megalomaniac. I've read works of fiction written in the first person where the word "I" appears less than in this book. Almost every page is bathed in the author's reminiscences, anecdotes, unsubstantiated personal views, etc. -- none of it even remotely interesting, funny, or informative. On top of that, the author shows remarkable and clearly enunciated disdain for just about every scientist or researcher, particularly those in the field of economics. There are two or three exceptions of people whom he has personally elevated to the level of demi-god (of course these are all relatively obscure folks). He essentially says that winning the Nobel prize should be viewed as a badge of shame. What a supreme moron!

The book presents in many different ways to dangers and impossibility of predictions using the usual methods. It also comments on the fallacies of grouping and organisation using such approaches. While the basic arguement is fine and the supporting cognitive examples are fine, the continued expression of unjustified prejudice and insulting comments about different races and professions is both unnecessary and dissapointing. I would look for a short summary written in an appropriate manner rather than wade through his long and repeated explanations interspersed with biased asides.

If you read Fooled by Randomness, or have an ounce of statistical knowledge or common sense, dont bother reading this book. Theres nothing new here. It could all be said in about 10 pages.

Also, the arrogant writing style is really annoying.

The greatest parts of the book could have been trimmed of the fat, as others have already pointed out. He spends a lot of time talking about himself, perhaps out of his own ethnic insecurities. Throughout the first half of the book, he constantly reminds the reader that he's Lebanese (and not altogether happy with that term, either). That, and he really should can the frequent references to the French language. Even if it is his native tongue, his incessant references to it come off as snooty and condescending. Points can instead be made in the lingua franca (another favorite term of his).

I probably got it worse than the rest of the reviewers, since I listened to the audio book version on a long car ride. Though it was read by a narrator and not the author, it was a 12 disc set of a collegiate lecture. It's disappointing to have to write anything negative about this book, since it does take some new directions well worth exploring. But at the end of nearly every chapter, I was left hanging; waiting for the punch line, so to speak. He often doesn't fully make his point. Either that or he staggers it unnecessarily among several chapters as if to tantalize the reader - it doesn't work. Then again, this type of work might best be appreciated in print format, especially when he speaks of the bell curve statistics.

I'll keep this short, as NNT certainly didn't with this book. The essence of this text is really quite neat and interesting: social dynamics + cognitive biases result in events which follow power law distributions.

While not a particularly long book, it isn't a quick read as you have to plod along with the authors ego sucking any levity from the text (despite his small jokes along the way.) If you are familiar with his previous book, or any work from behavioral economics you can certainly see where he is going from the get go. It just takes a while for him to get there.

If you are in a rush, I'd read all of the first part, the last chapter of the second part and then call it a day. There is nothing interesting of note from the 'technical' portion of part three that you couldn't have seen coming in chapter one.

A few years ago "Fooled by Randomness" did open my eyes and fascinate me. To my disappointment, this book added little to its precedessor, except more intelligent use of terms like "Black Swans" (shadowed by the many more jargons of his creation which I cant appreciate at all), and more "confronting" words against his targeted "psuedo intellectuals". Definitely insightful and thought provoking, but can be 1/4 shorter. Recommended, esp traders/investors who should always be aware of those theoretically over 6 sigma incidents (that happen once 6 months in markets), but should be read after "Fooled by Randomness".

p.s. Below please find some of my favorite passages for your reference.

On a given day 60% of those born in one of the two hospitals are boys. Which hospital is it likely to be? .........the very basis of statistics is that large samples are more stable and should fluctuate less from the long term average - here, 50% for each of the sexes - than smaller samples. pg 53

Chess grand masters actually do focus on where a speculative move might be weak; rookies, by comparison, look for confirmatory instances instead of falsifying ones. pg 59

The problem with experts is that they do not know what they do not know. pg 147

Dont cross a river if it is four feet deep on average. pg 161

Popper's central argument is that in order to predict historical events you need to predict technological innovation, itself fundamentally unpredictable. pg 171

Make sure that you have plenty of small bets; avoid being blinded by the vividness of one single Black Swan. pg 205

If you hear a prominent economist using the word equilibrium, or normal distribution, do not argue with him; just ignore him, or try to put a rat down his shirt. pg 210

Remember that if either of these two central assumptions (the flips are independent of one another; no wild jump) is not met, your moves (or coin tosses) will not cumulatively lead to the bell curve. pg 251

On p. 264, 96 * (1000000/250000) ^ -1.5 is not equal to 8 as stated. If only this book had been edited (by whoever does William Poundstone's books maybe), it would have been great. A though provoking book that made me want to reread my old copy of Nelson Goodman Fact, Fiction and Forecast and also reminded me of that fire at the old MGM Grand hotel in Vegas when people were screaming from upper story balconies while I stood under the Porte-cochere at Caesars. Different kinds of risks indeed.

Black Swan is a solid read. Admittedly, I do not find it as insightful as "Fooled by Randomness;" however, I would recommend it. The narrower breadth is likely the reason for my reduced pleasure.

Having said all of that, last week, Bear Stearns was sold to JP Morgan Chase for ~$250M (x-debt). At the root of the decline of Bear were a bunch of models / bankers that failed to consider fat tails or "Black Swans." Liquidity ceased w/in short term lending market (which were heavily used against long term assets), as banks feared the real value of other banks housing-related assets. Banks were fearful, given there were correlations within the securitization unlike anything ever experienced historically ("prime" and ALT A loans, behaving like subprime, etc). This event only further solidifies the book's teachings, especially while it's (Bear and the read) fresh on the mind.

In summary, if you've read Fooled by Randomness, read it, you'll enjoy. If not, buy Fooled by Randomness first and see where you stand with the author, his writing style, his personality and his paradigm. Note: The author's personality and experiences are indeed special. I look forward to his next read.

It's quite an experience to finish reading _The Black Swan_ during the week in which one of America's most storied investment banks implodes and the wheels appear to have largely come off for the entire banking and (purportedly) hedging industry. I've also just read an article in the FT (from 17/03/08) in which Greenspan attempts to shift the entire blame for the meltdown on to poor risk models. No kidding?

So on one level, current events seem to be bearing out the core argument of _The Black Swan_: that years of 'careful' investing (Bear Sterns made its first lost since its founding this past quarter) can be obliterated by a single unforeseen event (sub-prime mortgages collapsing and taking the credit markets with them as everyone shuts down lending).

So, the relevance of this book goes a long way towards redeeming its arrogant style and irritating structure. I suppose that arrogance is fairly standard in the financial sector (and see where that got the banks!), but I tend to prefer a *little* humility in my books, especially when they talk about the underlying uncertainty in markets and in life. I also felt that at times the book resembled a kitchen sink of ideas -- it jumps between power laws and firm reputation without so much as a 'by your leave' -- and that a good editor could have forced _The Black Swan_ into something a bit more rounded and (at times) coherent. I would advise, for instance, reading _Six Degrees_ before reading _The Black Swan_ so as to be able to make more sense of the random pages that cover networks and network theory.

In spite of my issues with the *format* of _The Black Swan_, I still found the *content* to be extremely valuable for someone with a modest background in statistics and a level of conceptual comfort somewhere between 'cocktail party' and 'cocktail party with financial types'. So with several paperback versions now in print and daily evidence from the financial and real estate markets of the critical effect of "it'll never happen here" scenarios on the real world I'd strongly recommend a trip down to the local bookshop to pick up a copy.

Not for some time has a book affected my thinking as much as this one. Taleb's self-described "personal essay" is way too long and sometimes a little too angry, but his exposition of the flaws in our thinking has provided a new and useful lens for much of my own thinking. One salient example is the narrative fallacy: "our predilection for compact stories over raw truths" (p63). We tend to assign causes and reasons for events even when we lack any evidence of connections: We want to tell stories. Many of these stories are harmless, but others can keep us from being open to truth when it appears.

A second example is the problem of silent evidence: If one uses worshippers who prayed and survived a subsequent shipwreck as evidence of the efficacy of prayer, an observer might ask, What of those who prayed and then drowned? "The drowned worshippers, being dead, would have a lot of trouble advertising their experiences from the bottom of the sea" (p100). It's not that I've never noticed these fallacies before, but having a name for them makes them much easier to identify. These points and many more like them make this volume a worthy read.

The titular Black Swans are events with three characteristics: (1) they are outside of regular expectations because nothing in the past convincingly points to their possibility, (2) they carry an extreme impact, and (3) they are explainable and predictable after the fact although not before (p. xvii-xviii). Taleb argues that many modern phenomena, including the distribution of wealth (Bill Gates's income), book and movie success (the Da Vinci Code), and mortality in modern warfare (to name a few) are subject to Black Swan events. Many natural and historical phenomena (such as the distribution of human heights or mortality in traditional warfare) are not as subject to Black Swans.

None of the standard statistical tools used for analysis in finance, economics, and social sciences are capable of accounting for Black Swans, making them - according to Taleb - worse than worthless, as they give a false sense of knowledge and security. (For example, he demonstrates how wildly erroneous financial projections unfailingly are and asks why these are useful.)

Taleb makes his point in thirty different ways, gives his personal history, insults economists repeatedly, and creates a number of hypothetical characters. He sometimes expounds too informally given the paradigm-shifting point he is trying to make, but overall the book has much to offer. He outlines a whole host of psychological biases and reasoning fallacies (beyond the two I mentioned above) that affect our thinking and predicting, often blinding us to the possibility of black swans.

Most of the book is non-technical [not that I'm the best judge of that, with an advanced economics degree], but a few chapters towards the end get into more technical detail: Taleb warns us in advance.

I listened to the unabridged audiobook narrated by David Chandler [12 CDs], published by Recorded Books. The narration is very good (with the exception that the narrator always pronounces foreign names with a little pause and a flare, like it's a separate performance; but that's a small and entertaining flaw).

[Note on content: The book uses strong language a handful of times.]