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A review by tyresius
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
3.0
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.