The Black Swan

Written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Narrated by David Chandler

Maverick thinker Nassim Nicholas Taleb had an illustrious career on Wall Street before turning his focus to his black swan theory. Not all swans are white, and not all events-no matter what the experts think-are predictable. Taleb shows that black swans, like 9/11, cannot be foreseen and have an immeasurable impact on the world. "[Taleb] administers a severe thrashing to MBA- and Nobel Prize-credentialed experts who make their living from economic forecasting."-Booklist

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 10, 2007
• ISBN: 9781436100892

Reviews for The Black Swan

[kukulaj · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This 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.

[scottjpearson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

For 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.

[aadyer · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

At 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

[brown_3 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I 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.

[mercef_9 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I found this book sitting unloved on my library shelves. I'd never heard of it but it sounded intriguing.
If only I could give it a half star rating. Possibly the most boring book I have ever attempted to read.
Anyway, read the lengthy reviews of others who know what they're talking about who also gave it a poor rating. They are at least entertaining.

[isatyajeet · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Catastrophe, chaos, and probability in complex process perception. Assuming more order exists in chaos than 'order'

[nyxnekhbet · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mr. 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.

[judd_maltin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It was a fun book to read - I read it sporadically over many lunchtimes. It was much like having a droll colleague to sit with over lunch. I had read Wittgenstein ad nauseum in university, so I was ready for his style.

Yes, it's a poor narrative, but that's the point. Yes, it's often brusque and unfair, that's the point. I found it funny, and sometimes sobering. Kept me on my intellectual toes.

It was recommended to me by a friend who read my own work in data center operations and systems orchestration theory, to help round out my ideas. It's an area where we as theorists and practitioners are always looking for the Black Swan (the unpredictable cataclysm) that will bring down our systems. The book has helped me think a bit more clearly about that which I cannot predict, and how to profit from it. For example, Netflix has a wonderful tool called 'Chaos Monkey.' It randomly destroys parts of their system so they can ensure that their system's self-healing properties are always successful. It fit right in with Taleb's meditations, and I'm eager to drive into his other books and see where these patterns, and this patternless patterns, emerge again.

[noisy_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Second edition: contains Postscript essay. This deserves a fuller review, but I'll keep it brief because it's taken me a long time to actually reach the end of the book and some of the detail is lost. And there lies part of the problem, because this book started out as a five-star work because of the quality of the writing and the impact of the message but drifted down in my estimation the further I progressed. I think it was just the repetition of the message that wore me down, because at the end of each of the four parts I was considering knocking half-a-star off my final evaluation. In the end, the Postscript essay NNT (yep, that's how he refers to himself) added in the revised edition pulls it back to make a solid four-star evaluation. So, here's a self-confident and erudite chap pulling down the walls of the economic establishment. Or at least trying to, because the overly self-confident and nowhere near as erudite members of that establishment just carry on blithely ignorant of the message about the Black Swan event ('all swans are white' until you actually travel to the southern hemisphere and expose that fallacy) that lurks around the corner if you put your trust in economic models. And the message is that stark - all economic models, not just some. I recently saw NNT on television (Newsnight, BBC2) where he moderated that somewhat by saying models can be effective at the micro level, but break down at the macro level. He convinced me; but that was pushing at an open door. I've designed a computer system to support money market traders, and the rules I was given convinced me it's just the same as a casino. Except the '0' (and '00' for those in some locations) mean that you don't just lose your stake but your whole wad. Read it, then, but I'll quite understand if you abandon the attempt part way through because of the arrogance on display. The second edition with the additional essay saved it for me, so please use that by preference. Note that it will be your loss if you don't stay the course.

[marshapetry · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An enormously huge book to make a point that should not have taken this many pages to make. Over and over again. It was a good book but man, oh, man... did this guy get paid by the page?

[katesherrod · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was my food for thought listening while I walked my dog and looked at nature. I'm strongly considering going back to school and becoming a botanist or mycologist and have been bracing myself for another round of struggles with my strong intuitive mistrust of statistics and experimental design (this I'm contemplating would not be my first professional science rodeo) and "the Gaussian"/Platonist reliance on simplification and organization. Taleb gave eloquent voice and rigor to my nagging doubts, which I'm not often able to articulate when confronted by, say, a bank of academic authority figures. I think I'm going to wind up cherishing this book almost like a talisman against the pressure I'm anticipating 8)

[stephenbarkley · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What you don't know is far more relevant than what you do know. The books you haven't read yet are more valuable than the ones you have read.What we do know allows us to speculate and create forecasts about the future. What we don't know—the black swan—renders our patterns meaningless.This truth comes painfully alive in Taleb's graph of a turkey's life. Every day the turkey receives food from the farmer and grows in size. Extrapolating from what the turkey knows suggests a rosy future for the bird. Thanksgiving dinner is the turkey's black swan.Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a unique author. He is bluntly irreverent, with the sort of disdain for common opinion only Žižek could match! This book is equal parts scientific analysis on logical fallacies and philosophical reflection on the role of randomness in life. Taleb's prose is at the same time dense and page-turning.The Black Swan will help you live well in a life where highly improbable events happen.

[mdubois_29 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Excellent discussion of uncertain risks and the default to focus on what we know rather than what we don't.

[themulhern · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The author wants us to know that he is well-connected, went to some very fancy schools, and, at least at one point, was making a whole lot of money.He also has a point, but is a little too convinced that his thinking is novel. I've read so many books that point out that the success or failure of a corporation may not have too much to do with its CEO. Taleb is not the first to think of that, but he seems to think he is.His writing is full of cheap shots which ceaselessly undermine and distract from the points he is trying to make.And I'm not sure that prostitutes generally get paid by the hour, they do what is essentially piecework."The Drunkards Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives" is not nearly as egotistical and has much the same points to make. I think Mlodinow probably never had the income that Taleb had when he was really raking it in, though.What is novel in this book is his discussion of prior thinkers, for instance his mention of Cicero. The fact that he makes up half the people he talks about is not really that useful.He comes across as a bit lazy, more of a ranconteur than a serious author.Of course, the book "The Black Swan" itself qualifies as a black swan in the sense of the author.

[jms001 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I 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.

[kamgeb · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The basic premise that we are ruled by black swans, highly improbable things we can't predict, was interesting. However, the author was full of himself and it was VERY repetitive.

[egon_spengler · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book has changed the way I view the world.

[martensgirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a fascinating, important book of interest to anyone who has entrusted money in the hands of traders. It should also be required reading for any student of economics or anyone who is planning a career in finance. The book is a tough read, but if you get past the first third it becomes easier as Taleb (slowly) gets to his point about how the bell-curve is applied in situations where it is not appropriate.

[piersanti-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An interesting point of view from someone who wrote about and predicted the problems with the housing/banking markets back before they actually happened. I didn't know the book would deal so much with finance, but I liked that the author always got right to his point.

[wester_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is an important book, one that could change your way of thinking.The premise is quite basic: reality isn't modeled well by the Gaussian curve, and this is a difference that makes a difference. I think the argument is solid, too.However, I found the writing style very irritating. The author is constantly insulting everybody that doesn't get his point right away, and as it's a point that is in direct opposition to many things we have been taught, that means almost everyone, including the reader. It's no fun reading a book that constantly scolds you for not getting it yet.That said, do read this book, if you can stand it.

[doingdewey · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

From 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...

[chriszodrow · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

 Taleb picks up Hume's project and extends it — there is only the certainty of uncertainty. It's what we don't know that is the real problem; if we can be certain that a problem is a problem is a problem. A great read despite the glaring pitfalls of such a total epistemology. If Taleb's thesis is taken as a part of a larger understanding of existence, it makes perfect sense, but as a model of operational strategy for everything? Nah.

[ffortsa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

[The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable] by Nassim Nicholas Talib is for most of its length a philosopher/statistician's squeal of fury that so many people get things so wrong so often. He is speaking most about those pundits who pontificate about what is going to happen in the economy, politics, and other areas of life without what he would say is proper regard for the real origin of risk. Of course, our recent economic history is the most obvious example of his thesis, although not the only one. And his thesis is that for the most part, statistics is, as Mark Twain said, just the most egregious type of lie. (The quote is 'lies, damned lies, and statistics'.). Talib's opinion is that the famous bell curve, or Gaussian distribution, is no more predictive than sheep's entrails, that no one really understands what the mathematics surrounding it means, and that those who pretend to be able to apply data using it or any other charting method to come up with predictive results are just so many snake oil salesmen.I don't think I'm exaggerating his intention, and certainly not his pique.Whether you would like to believe that or not, his second thesis is scarier. It is that the risks we should really be worrying about are the ones we cannot anticipate, or more ominously, the ones we are unwilling to anticipate. And again, this applies most obviously to the recent economic crisis, but could apply equally to medical research, global warming, weather predictions, etc. These are what he calls the black swans, the things we KNOW can't happen, can't exist, but somehow appear anyway. The term comes from the European conviction stretching back to the Greeks that all swans are white, which was suddenly and magically disproven when Europeans happened upon Australia. It's his way of saying 'never say never'.Eventually, he grudgingly agrees to give some advice to the shell-shocked reader, which mainly consists of: question every assumption, concentrate on safety, don't risk anything you can't lose, and don't listen to the pundits. Not revolutionary. But advising us in that way is not his goal. His goal is to try to make the reader see the folly of prediction, the incompetence of applied statistics, and the childish wishfulness of any hope of predicting the future.OK. I get it. It goes on a little too long, in sometimes numbing detail, with the snarkiest of tones and attitude. Every once in a while he tells the less than superbly educated reader they can skip ahead - they don't have to bother themselves with the technical bits. He is of course the smartest guy in the room, and everyone else (except for a select few mathematicians and icononclastic thinkers) is an idiot. Or a fraud. I like reading some of the works by those other select folks. I like the behavioral economists and their insistence on puncturing assumptions by actually testing them. And I totally sympathize with Talib's quarrel with academic economic theory as just that, academic instead of reflecting real life. But it would have been a little better if he hadn't hit me over the head with these ideas quite so much.

[pondlife_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An interesting and thought-provoking book.But it's far too long and repetitive, and the author lets his ego show through a bit too much and sometimes appears arrogant.

[bke-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Randomness matters, and not everything fits a Gaussian. This book examines the influence of highly improbable and unpredictable events that have massive impacts.

[ct92-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

There 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.

[rmagahiz · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

He describes a few interesting ideas but presents them in a a manner which has very little appeal to me, with lots of flash and subjectivity. I just got tired of feeling manipulated by the silly writing style and wanted to pick a fight with the author after a certain point. Stories about financial markets have lost a lot of their luster after the crash of 2008, also. As much as I failed to enjoy the experience of reading this, I did learn a few things in the course of reading it, so my rating is higher than my emotional attachment would support.

[lyndatrue · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It was interesting, but a bit overrated for what it was. The author has had some brilliant ideas about forecasting, and statistics, and his point about what we know or don't know about the actual occurrence of something (noted by the title of the book) is an important one. He just wandered too much, and eventually it was more than I could take.I was astonished to see that I could sell it back on Amazon, and did so. Thank you, anonymous used book seller, for buying it. I just used the money to buy more books that I loved.

[drjesons · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Highly interesting but hard to understand. After reading this book, I feel that everything is probalble and nothing is certain, which is true and it is an important book to read for young people whose life experience is limited.

[murphy4jacobs · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This isn't an easy book to review because it's dealing with an idea that's at one time simple and yet so outside the regular paradigm that it is hard to grasp. It is derived in great part from the world of high finance, but it applies everywhere, to everything. The idea is this -- we have four areas of knowledge -- what we know we know, what we know we don't know, what we know we don't know, and what we don't know what we don't know. It's that 4th area where we get into the most trouble and where we try in all kinds of ways to predict, forecast, prognosticate, and otherwise reveal (which we can't, because we don't know what we don't know). Big events with big consequences come out of that quadrant, and the author names these Black Swans.

And if you're still with me, let me say that is a huge oversimplification of the ideas in this book. Taleb has written a huge personal essay on a highly practical yet nearly unconsidered area of human knowledge and endeavor. He's studied it, thought about it, talked about it (usually while walking), and written about it. He's found the places it most affects us. He's thought about and proposes methods for making ourselves robust against it (or taking advantage of it, because a Black Swan can be positive or negative, depending on one's preparation and response).

I am not qualified to review this book except to say how it affected me. It has exposed me to the idea that the most valuable part of my library are the books I have yet not read. It tells me not to let things get too big because everything and anything can (and eventually will) fail. Small, fast, and flexible tends to survive and even thrive. Conservative didn't mean what I thought it meant. I need to read this book again one day.