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Books : The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly ImprobableIn association with Amazon.com List Price: $26.95 Amazon.com's Price: $17.79 You Save: $9.16 (34%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: HardcoverDewey Decimal Number: 003.54 EAN: 9781400063512 ISBN: 1400063515 Label: Random House Manufacturer: Random House Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 400 Publication Date: April 17, 2007 Publisher: Random House Release Date: April 17, 2007 Studio: Random House Sales Rank: 208 Related Items:
Editorial Review: Product Description: A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives. 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. Amazon.com: Bestselling author Nassim Nicholas Taleb continues his exploration of randomness in his fascinating new book, The Black Swan, in which he examines the influence of highly improbable and unpredictable events that have massive impact. Engaging and enlightening, The Black Swan is a book that may change the way you think about the world, a book that Chris Anderson calls, "a delightful romp through history, economics, and the frailties of human nature." See Anderson's entire guest review below. Guest Reviewer: Chris Anderson  Chris Anderson is editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and the author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. Four hundred years ago, Francis Bacon warned that our minds are wired to deceive us. "Beware the fallacies into which undisciplined thinkers most easily fall--they are the real distorting prisms of human nature." Chief among them: "Assuming more order than exists in chaotic nature." Now consider the typical stock market report: "Today investors bid shares down out of concern over Iranian oil production." Sigh. We're still doing it. Our brains are wired for narrative, not statistical uncertainty. And so we tell ourselves simple stories to explain complex thing we don't--and, most importantly, can't--know. The truth is that we have no idea why stock markets go up or down on any given day, and whatever reason we give is sure to be grossly simplified, if not flat out wrong. Nassim Nicholas Taleb first made this argument in Fooled by Randomness, an engaging look at the history and reasons for our predilection for self-deception when it comes to statistics. Now, in The Black Swan: the Impact of the Highly Improbable, he focuses on that most dismal of sciences, predicting the future. Forecasting is not just at the heart of Wall Street, but it’s something each of us does every time we make an insurance payment or strap on a seat belt. The problem, Nassim explains, is that we place too much weight on the odds that past events will repeat (diligently trying to follow the path of the "millionaire next door," when unrepeatable chance is a better explanation). Instead, the really important events are rare and unpredictable. He calls them Black Swans, which is a reference to a 17th century philosophical thought experiment. In Europe all anyone had ever seen were white swans; indeed, "all swans are white" had long been used as the standard example of a scientific truth. So what was the chance of seeing a black one? Impossible to calculate, or at least they were until 1697, when explorers found Cygnus atratus in Australia. Nassim argues that most of the really big events in our world are rare and unpredictable, and thus trying to extract generalizable stories to explain them may be emotionally satisfying, but it's practically useless. September 11th is one such example, and stock market crashes are another. Or, as he puts it, "History does not crawl, it jumps." Our assumptions grow out of the bell-curve predictability of what he calls "Mediocristan," while our world is really shaped by the wild powerlaw swings of "Extremistan." In full disclosure, I'm a long admirer of Taleb's work and a few of my comments on drafts found their way into the book. I, too, look at the world through the powerlaw lens, and I too find that it reveals how many of our assumptions are wrong. But Taleb takes this to a new level with a delightful romp through history, economics, and the frailties of human nature. --Chris Anderson Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Fantastic perspectives that increase your own horizonsLoved it. Great thinking, fantastic perspectives..like this gem referring to Umberto Eco's library "He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with "Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?" and the others -- a very small minority -- who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are ... Read More Rating:  - The author seems to fall into ludic fallacy(page 182) which he wants to dispelpage 14: I still do not understand why the author thinks that an educated person is supposed to guess better than a layman about the outcome of a war. In fact any person is as much expert in that endeavor as any other. page 21: I still can not see the relationship between war and finance in the context. for a philosopher examining problems in induction the boundary between true/false is not well drawn. page 44: I wonder if he is naive. What does he ... Read More Rating:  - Black SwanWhether you risk manage for a living or just want to open your mind to all possibility this is a great read. Rating: - fun and interesting yet unevenLet me put it this way: I enjoyed some chapters more than others. The first two thirds of the book is an excellent introduction into epistemology and the problem of induction. To the lay reader without experience in such matters, epistemological issues will be brought forward in a highly entertaining and relevant manner. Many questions and ideas that I (and I assume most readers) have sometimes pondered (though not as eloquently) are articulated by Taleb here. For instance, our modern day categories ... Read More Rating: - Food for your brainsThis book is good. Maybe I don't even understand how good it is. The way Taleb is writing gets to your ego; he feels so cocky. But, yes, man has a point. I started to laugh to myself and to my capabilities of "estimating" and even "thinking" while reading this book. Taleb has interesting view point to life; don't try to predict it, or forecast it, life will fool you anyway, sucker! Don't believe in your most valued economic forecasters, they don't know much, unfortunate... for them. Expose your self ... Read More Browse for similar items by category:
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