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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
400 pages to make one good point. Unstructured and very repetitive writing. First case where the movie was better.
This insightful book is written in a strong condescending tone. The author does not bear fools lightly, and he finds many as he explores the topics of risk, prediction, and probability. The tone may put many readers off, which is too bad because Taleb has important, thought-provoking things to say here about "epistemic arrogance," i.e., we think we know more than we actually do. We rely on bell curves and so-called experts who apply inappropriate methodologies and measurements to questionable data. In fact, the major unpredictable events (i.e, those that would be multiple standard deviations from the norm on those kind of measures) are the most important, most influential, and (from at least his standpoint as a financial expert) the most profitable or damning, not to mention more common than we care to admit. There are times I wanted a bit more focus to his writing; sometimes he jumps around, breaking the flow, but he only does this because he is clearly passionate about the topic. Stimulating and interesting.
One caveat: One of the major criticisms I've heard of this book is that it doesn't add much to his earlier work, Fooled by Randomness. I have not read his earlier work, so this is all new to me.
One caveat: One of the major criticisms I've heard of this book is that it doesn't add much to his earlier work, Fooled by Randomness. I have not read his earlier work, so this is all new to me.
Ein Mann der verärgert,
der all das was wir glauben über Vorhersagen, historische Erklärungsansätze und Abweichungen zu wissen und berechnen zu können pulverisiert.
Der schwarze Schwan: ein unwahrscheinliches Ereignis, das wir haben nicht kommen sehen (im positiven sowie negativen Sinne).
Zu Beginn geht er mit vielen Beispielen auf unsere Unfähigkeit zu denken ein, bzw. welche Herausforderung uns unsere Biologie stellt. Hier finden wir sehr viele Referenzen zu dem großartigen Daniel Kahneman und seinen Studien, die sich in dem Buch "schnelles Denken, langsames Denken" wiederfinden, das ich an dieser Stelle auf das äußerste empfehlen möchte.
Wichtige Schlagworte, die in diesem Buch intensiv behandelt werden:
Extremistan ( unsere Welt in der wir leben, zufällig, wild (insbesondere die Finanzwelt), in der die Glockenkurve nicht funktioniert und nur durch die Fraktale von Mandelbrot möglich ist, das Risiko etwas stärker einzugrenzen und graue Schwäne zu produzieren)
Mediokristan (eine Welt des Mittelmaßes, ehr die Welt unserer Vorfahren, nur hier funktioniert die Gaußsche Glockenkurve ( z.B.Gewicht und Größe von Menschen)
Platonität
Bestätigungsfehler
narrative Verzerrung
ludische Verzerrung
Induktionsproblem
stumme Zeugnisse
Chaostheorie
Wir lernen stetig auf alles eine Antwort parat zu haben und versuchen alles zu erklären.
Traut Euch zu sagen: " Ich weiß es nicht".
Taleb wirbt dafür Risiken einzugehen. Allerdings dort, wo wenig Schaden angerichtet werden kann - Risiken einzugehen die tendenziell ehr positive Schwarze Schwäne produzieren.
Tribut werden insbesondere Umberto Eco, Mandelbrot, Poincare (wusstet Ihr, das er der eigentliche Begründer der Relativitätstheorie war?) und Popper gezollt.
Eine Erkenntnis meinerseits nach dieser Lektüre, weshalb ich Michelle Houellebecq mittlerweile für einen der genialsten Schriftsteller unserer Zeit halte ist, dass er sich genau dieser ganzen Fehler im Denksystem, denen wir aufsitzen, bedient und daher so extrem unbequeme Literatur produziert, die vielen missfällt.
Taleb:"Die Geschichte und Gesellschaften kriechen nicht dahin, sie machen Sprünge. Sie verlaufen von einem Bruch zum anderen. Trotzdem glauben wir und die Historiker an das vorhersehbare Voranschreiten in kleinen Schritten"
Tja, Houellebecq hat in Unterwerfung genau diesen Sprung gewagt.
Der Schwarze Schwan ist für mich eins der bedeutendsten Sachbücher, die ich bisher gelesen habe.
der all das was wir glauben über Vorhersagen, historische Erklärungsansätze und Abweichungen zu wissen und berechnen zu können pulverisiert.
Der schwarze Schwan: ein unwahrscheinliches Ereignis, das wir haben nicht kommen sehen (im positiven sowie negativen Sinne).
Zu Beginn geht er mit vielen Beispielen auf unsere Unfähigkeit zu denken ein, bzw. welche Herausforderung uns unsere Biologie stellt. Hier finden wir sehr viele Referenzen zu dem großartigen Daniel Kahneman und seinen Studien, die sich in dem Buch "schnelles Denken, langsames Denken" wiederfinden, das ich an dieser Stelle auf das äußerste empfehlen möchte.
Wichtige Schlagworte, die in diesem Buch intensiv behandelt werden:
Extremistan ( unsere Welt in der wir leben, zufällig, wild (insbesondere die Finanzwelt), in der die Glockenkurve nicht funktioniert und nur durch die Fraktale von Mandelbrot möglich ist, das Risiko etwas stärker einzugrenzen und graue Schwäne zu produzieren)
Mediokristan (eine Welt des Mittelmaßes, ehr die Welt unserer Vorfahren, nur hier funktioniert die Gaußsche Glockenkurve ( z.B.Gewicht und Größe von Menschen)
Platonität
Bestätigungsfehler
narrative Verzerrung
ludische Verzerrung
Induktionsproblem
stumme Zeugnisse
Chaostheorie
Wir lernen stetig auf alles eine Antwort parat zu haben und versuchen alles zu erklären.
Traut Euch zu sagen: " Ich weiß es nicht".
Taleb wirbt dafür Risiken einzugehen. Allerdings dort, wo wenig Schaden angerichtet werden kann - Risiken einzugehen die tendenziell ehr positive Schwarze Schwäne produzieren.
Tribut werden insbesondere Umberto Eco, Mandelbrot, Poincare (wusstet Ihr, das er der eigentliche Begründer der Relativitätstheorie war?) und Popper gezollt.
Eine Erkenntnis meinerseits nach dieser Lektüre, weshalb ich Michelle Houellebecq mittlerweile für einen der genialsten Schriftsteller unserer Zeit halte ist, dass er sich genau dieser ganzen Fehler im Denksystem, denen wir aufsitzen, bedient und daher so extrem unbequeme Literatur produziert, die vielen missfällt.
Taleb:"Die Geschichte und Gesellschaften kriechen nicht dahin, sie machen Sprünge. Sie verlaufen von einem Bruch zum anderen. Trotzdem glauben wir und die Historiker an das vorhersehbare Voranschreiten in kleinen Schritten"
Tja, Houellebecq hat in Unterwerfung genau diesen Sprung gewagt.
Der Schwarze Schwan ist für mich eins der bedeutendsten Sachbücher, die ich bisher gelesen habe.
This was a disappointing read for me. The writing was scattered and not well structured, making it difficult to follow a line of thinking. In addition, Taleb's writing style and attempts at humor were grating. That said, the subject matter itself -- that our lives are greatly influenced by rare, "black swan" events that we cannot predict in advance -- was interesting. I was able to tuck away a couple of thoughts that may help me as an investor.
Knowing little about this book in advance other than the oft-repeated description of rare, unexpected events as being black swans, I was surprised by the dense literary nonfiction and snark in The Black Swan. While tough going at times, it was a worthy use of my daily time slice for reading books.
The biggest takeaway for me is his criticism of the focus of economists, sociologists, futurists, investors, bankers, politicians, and just about everyone else in the belief that scale-invariant Gaussian, or normal, distributions are suitable for understanding past events and predicting future events. He labels this world Mediocristan, as opposed to the Extremistan in which he believes most phenomena occur.
In Mediocristan, there are effectively no long tails, and thus very few distant outliers (high sigma or standard deviation). In addition, the scale of the occurrences farther out on the Gaussian are very different than those closer to the middle. This means that the decrease in the likelihood of an extremely rare event versus a very rare event is vastly larger than the decrease in the likelihood of a very rare event versus a rare event. Taleb agrees that Gaussian distributions are a useful mathematical tool for some events that are truly the result of a random walk, such as Brownian motion, but that they do not apply to the majority of situations in which we find ourselves making predictions, such as financial markets. Nonetheless, the Nobel-prize winning modern portfolio therapy relies on Gaussian distributions, to Taleb’s great disgust.
In the more common world of Extremistan, fractals describe the distribution of most events. Fractals and related patterns are self-similar or self-affine (showing affinity, as opposed to being almost indistinguishable) at different areas of the distribution. In this sense, they are scalable, as opposed to scale-invariant. In two dimensions, these distributions often appear as power laws with a relatively consistent exponent. The long tails for power laws, while lightly populated, are much thicker than for Gaussians.
Along the way, he explains why many people fall into this trap. One major reason is confirmation bias. People tend to look for evidence to support their hypothesis more than for evidence that would refute it. They then construct narratives to make sense of observations or facts. The outliers that don’t fit the narrative are ignored so as to avoid cognitive dissonance. Our brains work via pattern recognition, which also throws away details. Since black swan events rare, their likelihood is discounted further for these reasons.
The biggest takeaway for me is his criticism of the focus of economists, sociologists, futurists, investors, bankers, politicians, and just about everyone else in the belief that scale-invariant Gaussian, or normal, distributions are suitable for understanding past events and predicting future events. He labels this world Mediocristan, as opposed to the Extremistan in which he believes most phenomena occur.
In Mediocristan, there are effectively no long tails, and thus very few distant outliers (high sigma or standard deviation). In addition, the scale of the occurrences farther out on the Gaussian are very different than those closer to the middle. This means that the decrease in the likelihood of an extremely rare event versus a very rare event is vastly larger than the decrease in the likelihood of a very rare event versus a rare event. Taleb agrees that Gaussian distributions are a useful mathematical tool for some events that are truly the result of a random walk, such as Brownian motion, but that they do not apply to the majority of situations in which we find ourselves making predictions, such as financial markets. Nonetheless, the Nobel-prize winning modern portfolio therapy relies on Gaussian distributions, to Taleb’s great disgust.
In the more common world of Extremistan, fractals describe the distribution of most events. Fractals and related patterns are self-similar or self-affine (showing affinity, as opposed to being almost indistinguishable) at different areas of the distribution. In this sense, they are scalable, as opposed to scale-invariant. In two dimensions, these distributions often appear as power laws with a relatively consistent exponent. The long tails for power laws, while lightly populated, are much thicker than for Gaussians.
Along the way, he explains why many people fall into this trap. One major reason is confirmation bias. People tend to look for evidence to support their hypothesis more than for evidence that would refute it. They then construct narratives to make sense of observations or facts. The outliers that don’t fit the narrative are ignored so as to avoid cognitive dissonance. Our brains work via pattern recognition, which also throws away details. Since black swan events rare, their likelihood is discounted further for these reasons.
I was inclined to give this a 4/5, but compared to Fooled By Randomness I had to give this a 3 stars. But this is a good 3/5, it is still reading the book, but the problem is that Taleb goes waaaay out of focus and delves in to unimportant topics.
"The book is too damn long". I have a feeling that he purposely wrote this at the end of the book, but him being self-aware does not make this any less true. His book contain excellent knowledge, you just have to dig a lot... Which should not be the norm.
"The book is too damn long". I have a feeling that he purposely wrote this at the end of the book, but him being self-aware does not make this any less true. His book contain excellent knowledge, you just have to dig a lot... Which should not be the norm.
Oh dear! I think this is quite possibly the shortest number of pages read before giving up on a book (somewhere during chapter 2).
I struggled with this from the get go. I'm afraid that the book is written with a style that can only be described as "narcissistic" and that is the only reason I could bear to read no more of this. Well, perhaps that and suspicions that it was going to use some very old tricks in order to convince the terminally gullible that it was saying something profound.
Perhaps he considers himself a rather accomplished orator more suited to ancient Greek civilisation than to modern readers but this tone, seemingly having swallowed a dictionary in the process, did not fool me. The book came across as little better than a nicely worded book of conspiracies.
I skimmed through a few reviews at Good Reads and it seems that my suspicions about the book were correct. I wasn't going to waste any more time on this.
See more book reviews at my blog
I struggled with this from the get go. I'm afraid that the book is written with a style that can only be described as "narcissistic" and that is the only reason I could bear to read no more of this. Well, perhaps that and suspicions that it was going to use some very old tricks in order to convince the terminally gullible that it was saying something profound.
Perhaps he considers himself a rather accomplished orator more suited to ancient Greek civilisation than to modern readers but this tone, seemingly having swallowed a dictionary in the process, did not fool me. The book came across as little better than a nicely worded book of conspiracies.
I skimmed through a few reviews at Good Reads and it seems that my suspicions about the book were correct. I wasn't going to waste any more time on this.
See more book reviews at my blog
Looking for an interesting book for book club discussion? This is it. My group talked for a full two hours and we could have gone on longer if we had the time. Interesting concepts about the stock market and predicting a rising stock.
one suggestion, make sure you don't skip the footnotes, they help explain the confusing sections.
one suggestion, make sure you don't skip the footnotes, they help explain the confusing sections.
Jesus this book was a fucking slog.
Not because of Taleb's ideas, which are, while sometimes inconsistent, pretty decent on the whole. It's just that Taleb himself seems like a pretentious dick, more interested in somehow giving himself his own reach around and calling everyone else an idiot than he was in actually communicating his ideas. (Okay. The ad hominem attack is over. Let's talk about his ideas.)
All things said and done, his premise effectively boils down to, "There are some arenas where rare events are inordinately consequential. Expose yourself to the good ones, protect yourself from the bad ones."
This seems like a simple enough idea to me. There were few practical things that you could do to implement this idea, according to Taleb, in that his advice is more in the vein of "don't do risky things."
One other important note: the Black Swan event is not a Black Swan event, if you are a swan that is black. 9/11 was a Black Swan to the American public, but not to the terrorists. Black Swans are more about YOUR lack of knowledge than they are about the event itself.
What you can do about that is learn as much as you can, while doing your level best to maintain the attitude that you know nothing - the sin is in having confidence that "I've got a handle on the world." If you know you know nothing, and act accordingly, the Black Swan will have less of an impact.
Not because of Taleb's ideas, which are, while sometimes inconsistent, pretty decent on the whole. It's just that Taleb himself seems like a pretentious dick, more interested in somehow giving himself his own reach around and calling everyone else an idiot than he was in actually communicating his ideas. (Okay. The ad hominem attack is over. Let's talk about his ideas.)
All things said and done, his premise effectively boils down to, "There are some arenas where rare events are inordinately consequential. Expose yourself to the good ones, protect yourself from the bad ones."
This seems like a simple enough idea to me. There were few practical things that you could do to implement this idea, according to Taleb, in that his advice is more in the vein of "don't do risky things."
One other important note: the Black Swan event is not a Black Swan event, if you are a swan that is black. 9/11 was a Black Swan to the American public, but not to the terrorists. Black Swans are more about YOUR lack of knowledge than they are about the event itself.
What you can do about that is learn as much as you can, while doing your level best to maintain the attitude that you know nothing - the sin is in having confidence that "I've got a handle on the world." If you know you know nothing, and act accordingly, the Black Swan will have less of an impact.