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ben_sch 's review for:
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I think a lot of what I said about Antifragile goes for this book too, except not as good.
He is much more egotistical, his idea is less interesting, and he has less moral philosophy. It becomes progressively less fun as he gets near the end of the book and he starts talking about his actual idea. I'd rather hear about the made up characters Nero Tulip and Yevgenia Krasnova, who was so ridiculous that I found her incredibly entertaining.
I do really like how he takes a simple idea, and gives makes it come alive with all sorts of philosophical implications that would otherwise seem inconsequential. It seems like people try to wax about mathematical / technical topics and give them extra meaning, and usually come out sounding like high schoolers. I think he succeeds in presenting the black swan as frame through which you can view the world. A more factual book would have looked quite different and basically say "risk measurement is bad, because it ignores things that people didn't think of", then give a bunch of examples. The reader would say "yes" and move on.
I'm not sure how this book became very popular, but I'm glad I did, because I really enjoyed his last couple books, and maybe he wouldn't have written them otherwise.
He is much more egotistical, his idea is less interesting, and he has less moral philosophy. It becomes progressively less fun as he gets near the end of the book and he starts talking about his actual idea. I'd rather hear about the made up characters Nero Tulip and Yevgenia Krasnova, who was so ridiculous that I found her incredibly entertaining.
I do really like how he takes a simple idea, and gives makes it come alive with all sorts of philosophical implications that would otherwise seem inconsequential. It seems like people try to wax about mathematical / technical topics and give them extra meaning, and usually come out sounding like high schoolers. I think he succeeds in presenting the black swan as frame through which you can view the world. A more factual book would have looked quite different and basically say "risk measurement is bad, because it ignores things that people didn't think of", then give a bunch of examples. The reader would say "yes" and move on.
I'm not sure how this book became very popular, but I'm glad I did, because I really enjoyed his last couple books, and maybe he wouldn't have written them otherwise.