The Black Swan, Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility"

Incerto, Book 2

By: Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Narrated by: Joe Ochman

Length: 15 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

The Black Swan is a stand-alone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, Antifragile, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes.

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. In this revelatory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don’t know, and this second edition features a new philosophical and empirical essay, “On Robustness and Fragility”, which offers tools to navigate and exploit a Black Swan world.

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.

Includes a bonus pdf of tables and figures.

Praise for Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“The most prophetic voice of all.” (GQ)

Praise for The Black Swan:

“[A book] that altered modern thinking.” (The Times, London)

“A masterpiece.” (Chris Anderson, Editor-in-chief of Wired, author of The Long Tail)

“Hugely enjoyable - compelling...easy to dip into.” (Financial Times)

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2010 Nassim Nicholas Taleb (P)2018 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Engaging.... The Black Swan has appealing cheek and admirable ambition.” (The New York Times Book Review)

“[Taleb writes] in a style that owes as much to Stephen Colbert as it does to Michel de Montaigne.... We eagerly romp with him through the follies of confirmation bias [and] narrative fallacy.” (The Wall Street Journal) 

“The Black Swan changed my view of how the world works.” (Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Laureate)

  “Idiosyncratically brilliant.” (Niall Ferguson, Los Angeles Times) 

Amazing Perspective

This book can be a real eye-opener if you are able to see past your biases and keep yourself open to new ideas. Taleb has a very blunt and sarcastic style, which I personally love so I truly enjoyed this book.

Brilliant

Love the story telling nature and the chippy commentary along the way. Great persona for a book to carry especially with the message it contains. Would recommend to all.

Enjoyable read

Finally got around to reading this and it was certainly worth the time to do so. I would recommend it to anyone that enjoys talking over ideas with cigars or coffee and generally finds pleasure in pondering a man's thoughts without the weight of dry presentation, as most good, but otherwise heavyweight treatises come to us.

Ultimately, Taleb conveys some rather fresh insight into uncertainty and modern statistics all the while accomplishing an enjoyable, albeit racious flow of direct conversation to the reader. something I found quite welcome. thank you Taleb

Listen to it

Listen to this. Download the PDF and Listen to it. I repeat listen to it.

He's right... annoying, but right

The narrator is very well suited for the over-the-top sarcasm bordering on insult comedy that is Mr. Taleb's style. At the core is how correct Mr. Taleb is. We make significantly erroneous assumptions about the normal distribution (chief among which is that it is not so normal at all), and these errors are at the heart of quite a bit of abuse of statistics. We politely ignore them when we wail and gnash our teeth when this process leads us astray. The second edition of this book has the virtue of discussing the actual way forward - unfortunately, too little of the book focuses on Mr. Taleb's theory of the fourth quadrant and understanding when the risk is the highest and most unmanageable in making erroneous Gaussian assumptions - this is really primarily just the topic of the epilogue. On the other hand it bears taking in mind the things that happened in between the original publication of this book and the present. They prove out Mr. Taleb's point. We know better, and it is beyond time we begin to act like it.

warning for contemporary arrogance

The evolution has a teaching of pluralism, diversity and devolution which seem to be forgotten in the modern societys decision-makers minds. The author has a clear and justified vision on the skewed conception of the policy-makers . A brialliant thinker all in all.

New Perspective on Risk

This book offered my first exposure to Nassim Taleb. It is a harsh review of modern economics and risk assessment/management, but also an important voice that brings diverse thinking and a highly legitimate view of real uncertainty. particularly in economics. A must read for all those seeking knowledge and wisdom.

In praise of Nassim Taleb

Taleb is a significant thinker. The reader will greatly enjoy and benefit from considering Taleb's ideas.

Great book and performance

Taleb makes a convincing case for the impact of black swans in every day life.

Great practical work

This book changed my approach to how I think. Actually it encouraged me to think vs use short cuts of conventional wisdom which often isn’t wisdom at all. I agree with Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, “The Black Swan changed my view of how the world works.”! The book has support through an extensive bibliography. If you are interested in making better decisions, learning how to not be blindsided, this is the book for you in my opinion.