The Black Swan
Written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Narrated by David Chandler
4/5
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About this audiobook
Editor's Note
Expect the unexpected…
“Expect the unexpected” is the simple but profound lesson of this book. A “black swan” is Taleb’s term for events that were wholly unpredictable but still happened and drastically altered the course of history. Let Taleb teach you never to mistake the unlikely for impossible again.
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Reviews for The Black Swan
2,046 ratings113 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Personally, I think it’s the best os the trilogy
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I really really wanted to finish this book. But the narrative is all of the place, there is no structure that I can discern. And the author is so full of himself, it grates more and more.
So, in spite of some useful ideas that I picked up in the first half, I regretfully had to give up. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A piece of work to study, in repetitio n. Thank you Nassim N Taleb!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Not as eye opening as I had thought. It’s ok ..
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Truly eye opening! Gets better every time you read it
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Honestly enjoyed his first book much more. Though I do enjoy his perspective and the way he thinks about the world. Ironically, he talks about clinical science the way he deigns how others talk about randomness and economics. Worth a listen, though.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A great thinker and his theories of how to recognize the conditions for which Gaussian distribution can be applied are explained. Thank god someone took that on. He seems like a hoot at a party - if your within earshot.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I'm not sure if it's Taleb's writing or the narrator's performance that gives out an aura of arrogance. I think it's the latter. Great ideas, yet painfully annoying to listen to.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A must read Nassim is a wise man! A+++++
All his books BTW - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book will make you Think out of the box.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This one was a really interesting to make you think from a different prospective
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This is a tough book to review. It covers some of my favorite subjects, e.g. fat tails and critical point phenomena in statistical physics. That this book came out just before the great 2008 financial meltdown, and Taleb really sketches out the exact scenario that played out then... amazing, really! Plus Taleb frames all this in a deeper epistemological framework. There are many great insights in this book!The problem I have with the book is that it's scattered, disjointed. Taleb admits as much at the start. It's a bit of a stream of consciousness. He's got a lot of stories and slogans, but never really spends enough time with one before racing on to the next. By the time the reader is at the end of the book, the whole system has been orbited enough times that the terrain is reasonably clear.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5it’s amazing to see how much has been said by people that don't have a clue and take shortcuts whenever its necessary to prove their ideas. Nassin Taleb gave us a simple perspective how much more interesting nature and reality is, when not conform to models accepted entirely on the premises of saving the work of dealing with them.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The writing style sucks. Some of the things labelled as black swan events were predicted before they happened - a good example is the 2008 economic crisis.
The FBI had people who were ringing alarm bells about a possible terror attack from the air and this was before 9/11.
Life is too short, avoid this book. I stopped reading it at chapter 4.1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For my job, I work in a technical field with high-level people in medical research who make important decisions that impact many. Thus, though I am not a primary decision-maker, anything I can do to better understand their mindsets and the impact of their decisions benefits my organization and my career. It is with this perspective that I approach this book. In it, Taleb uses a rare philosophical approach to business by addressing how we think. Many high-impact events (like, say, 9/11), when forecasted, are immediately and instinctively dismissed as “highly improbable.” Yet they have the potential to shift the future dramatically, for better or for worse. These events, nicknamed “black swans,” receive the focus of this book.This book’s central metaphor comes from an observation many in history made about swans. For a long time, Europeans observed that swans were always white and therefore never black. No one thought to do a conclusive study to prove or disprove the potentiality of black swans. They just made an immediate leap from observation to rule. And that leap was incorrect. Eventually, people saw black swans in Australia. Thus, a highly improbable event happened (fortunately without life-or-death impact).Managing risk is a central theme in the modern world. Rare events often prove to be a crux of history. Most of the time, those events are originally dismissed because they do not meet the center of a bell curve. Nonetheless, because of their potential to have great impact, planning for these events should be attended to. Through philosophical discussion, Taleb seeks to change our thoughts to instead focus on these events as potentially impactful. He relies on research of the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot (of fractal fame) to illustrate how seemingly unlikely random events occur when looked at prospectively.Professionally, I spend a lot of time with data and value Gaussian bell curves immensely for biomedical applications. However, I also recognize their limitations – especially, that the data has to be shown to be “normal” to begin with in order for Gaussian analysis to be valid. Many behavioral and financial researchers skip this step of rigor in their statistical analysis. Taleb is writing for a business/finance market that can dismiss outcomes as improbable. The biomedical world, of course, has its own black swans in the form of adverse health events (like cancer), but the threat of litigation and cultural accountability often keep these events on the forefront of diagnostic minds. Nonetheless, it’s good practice to consider potential outcomes when considering risk, regardless of small probabilities. Taleb addresses this thought process directly in this book and seeks to help us all manage an uncertain world more wisely.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great book, so rich with ideas and thinking elements. listening to it is good, but I think a second read will be need to get the most of it.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The philosophical rumination about causality and chaos theory throughout the pages of this audiobook made for a useful bedtime story during the global coronavirus crisis of 2020. The author gave no answers to the cause of major events such as the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 or 9/11 in 2001. So we are left with the feeling that such major events that can change the course of human history, are simply Black Swans. This philosophical mindset could be useful, for example, in undermining the certainty of naive individuals who equate computer modeling results of future global surface temperature, with reality. For how can these computer models forecast a Black Swan event?
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5At times this is a difficult to read polemic on uncertainty. Paragraph whilst the authors charm and obvious erudition come through it is not the easiest of books to read. I do find some parts of it difficult to follow and I would recommend not reading this when tired. However some of the stipulations suppositions and theories within our very intriguing and definitely worthwhile looking at. Selfishness
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I think there are a lot of valuable lessons in this book. Since it talks about random and unexpected events, I'd not say it can change our lives too much since we can't anticipate an event. That said it makes the reader aware of the impact of the unexpected and rare events and this alone can improve your outlook on life. For example, you can now filter news stories and understand that acts of terrorism or violence are reported precisely because they aren't common place. Keep that in mind next time there the media try to tell you to be terrified of something.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5From the beginning, I could tell this book was going to be tough going. I’ve read several similar books attacking conventional wisdom, including Freakonomics (right before starting this project) and Wrong (reviewed here). Of the three, this book was by far the least conversational and most intellectual (ie most difficult to read!). The book took a lot of time to make a few simple points. There were also many chapters that started with anecdotes not clearly related to the subject of the book. This gives the disorienting sensation of having walked into a room and realizing you don’t remember why you decided to head to that room in the first place!
Read the rest here...6 people found this helpful
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I cannot recall another book where the author praises himself more while continually dismissing the work of others. This running comparison of the author's brilliance with the incompetence of others would be easier to swallow if he had provided references to his and others' work. (Names of the author's friends and his life experiences are not adequate references.)The primary example upon which he based the book (the turkey story) is a beautiful example of statistics with a sample size of one! With no more data than one turkey's growth and death records a year for each of the past few years (or a few turkeys from last year), elementary statistics would be adequate to predict the turkey's Black Swan event to the day.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5There is no doubt that Nassim Taleb is smart. The idea of the book, and the first couple of pages, were very interesting, and I think the thoughts behind the book were fine.
Taleb explains and analyze a lot of different events in this book, using his "Black Swan Theory" (The idea that everything is unpredictable). He talks about unpredictable forces in war and life, and especially writes quite a bit about 9/11, and the unpredictable things that caused 9/11 (or made 9/11 not as bad as it could have been)
Unfortunately, this book is way way way too long. I struggled through it, and almost gave up multiple times. Most of this book could have been cooked down a lot, maybe removing 2-300 pages. In that case I would probably have loved it. In this case, I don't feel like giving it more than 2 stars. Because it was okay. But I will have forgotten 95% of this book before tomorrow, and that is a shame.3 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Taleb, saving is from stupidity again by highlighting our cognitive biases and what to do
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I think that the main reason why I even started reading this book was because I thought it would be more interesting than it actually was. Not to say that it was terrible...it just wasn't what I thought it would be. Taleb comes off at a little presumptuous sometimes...actually, all the time.
There is a main point to the entire book, and it's the fact that life is unpredictable. He reiterates this same point in different parts of his book, with some examples drier than others. I actually found it to be more interesting the more I read, but some parts were just completely over my head, such as the Gaussian framework, or stuff that dealt with the bell curve. To his credit, he does tell the reader that certain chapters can be skipped over if one doesn't really know or care for some of the hard facts.
Anyway, I'd recommend this book for those that are more interested in statistics, analyzing (political analysts, financial analysts, etc.), philosophers, and more simply because I want to know what your opinion on his writing would be. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book is essentially what it’s like to be in the mind of a condescending, smart Alec intellectual as they silently judge you. A bit too much French filled ranting and logic games, but overall the idea is fascinating and his cheeky attitude towards the intellectual establishment is refreshing.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Taleb is great
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Catastrophe, chaos, and probability in complex process perception. Assuming more order exists in chaos than 'order'
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Changed my life by introducing me to probabilistic thinking. Taleb has a habit of talking too much and parts of the book are a chore to get through, but the message is superb.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mr. Taleb is a statistician by trade and while you may think this would made the book a difficult read if you aren't into that kind of thing I think you would be wrong. This book could be described as a 'black swan' in the way it appeals unexpectedly to those outside the world of economics, politics, finance and risk analysis. Essentially, "black swans" are events which take place that are outside of our expectations. They are ‘outliers’; they are considered unpredictable and unpreventable and bring with them a major shift in attitudes, core beliefs and/or massive consequences. Even though we most times think we are well informed and prepared these events show us our folly. I quite enjoyed this book and felt that I learned a lot about the way that we (humans) think and just how far off base we sometimes are. Remember, ANYTHING is possible - no matter how improbable.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mind blown! - will definitely have to read this again! - This book has so many layers to it!!
2 people found this helpful