The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
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.
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- ISBN: 9781400063512
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222 Reviews
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 14, 2007 Type: User Review |
Probabilistically Addictive!
The Black Swan is one of those landmark cross-disciplinary works that should be read by all people interested in deepening their knowledge of our understanding of reality and the distortion of reality by cognitive and emotional biases. In a...
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 5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 11, 2007 Type: User Review |
Power laws and fractals and wild randomness,.. Oh my!
Sorry to say, we are "probably" not in Kansas anymore. Taleb is a modern day Renaissance man. No, not the Hedge Fund run by Dr. Simons. I enjoy catastrophy, chaos and complexity theory. I have read and enjoyed his prior book Fooled by Randomness....
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 4.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 10, 2007 Type: User Review |
I hate this book :)
I always hoped to make money on stock market. Now I know it is impossible...
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5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 10, 2007 Type: User Review |
Amusing and Though-Provoking
The Black Swan author, Mr. Taleb is a very funny man. He has a great sense of humor and it shows through in his writing. Most of the good stuff in this book is in his rambling departures away from the actual subject of the book. As for the...
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4.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 09, 2007 Type: User Review |
Interesting
I liked it very much. However friend of mine began to read but didn't finish - lost interest in the middle.
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5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 08, 2007 Type: User Review |
A must read
As a professional portfolio manager and CFA charterholder, I found this book to be of utmost importance in understanding the true risks we face in today's markets. With several 3 and 4 standard deviation events in the US stock markets this year...
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5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 03, 2007 Type: User Review |
Rant that needed severe editing
This, like a lot of nonfiction books on markets, is a Harvard Business Review article grown overlong.
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 3.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 03, 2007 Type: User Review |
This book is a great starting point for YOUR thinking!
Yes, there's a lot that readers of very streamlined books targeted at very specific audiences will find to ruffle their feathers here. So if you read books just to add "facts" to your brain (i.e., you don't really ever think, you just remember),...
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5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 02, 2007 Type: User Review |
Thought Provoking
I admit that this book won't win any writing prizes, but I still found it enjoyable and thought-provoking. It is an excellent antidote to the "blue ocean, search for excellence, how I brilliantly predicted the future and became rich" line of...
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4.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 02, 2007 Type: User Review |
mind boggling
I read this book from cover to cover and decided it was the most significant book I had ever read. However, although entertaining, it is not an easy read, so having completed it I immediately re-read it to improve my grasp of the subject. I...
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5.00/5 |
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