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Summary: Good stuff!
Comment: This is a very good book. It is thought provoking and works well as a new way of looking at the randomness in the world. A lot of people here have criticized Taleb for displaying a massive ego, and putting forward things that they dont agree with. Indeed, he is very opinionated and forward and I also disagree with some of the things he says (comments about the uncertainty principle mainly) BUT it is much more entertaining to read this way. Ultimately who wants to read a book that just confirms what they thought was true already? You read a book to challenge yourself, and your preconceptions about the world. This book does that. Just thinking about the extreme stuff helps give an insight into how some people see the world, and even if you dont agree, surely it is interesting to find out about?
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Summary: Up the Swanee
Comment: There may be the germ of a good pamphlet in this book, but I wonder whether it might be reduced to a single trite aphorism like 'the wise man knows that he knows nothing'. Taleb's intellectual self-regard is so overpowering that it's almost comic, particularly since he has to concede that what he calls 'my ideas' have all been appropriated from others, and he rants away for page after structureless page about his pet hates(economists and other soothsaying social scientists). I do like the turkey feeding/confidence graph as an illustration of the trouble with inductive reasoning, but he blows that highlight early on. I mean, the guy is right enough - but anyone with the most moderate self-starting insight has probably come to much the same conclusions about life already.
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Summary: Great idea, could be explained in a far clearer way
Comment: I wanted to like this book and looked forward to reading it.
Starting with the positive points first. I think that the author's theory is extremely original. He seeks to show (with some success) how many attitudes to risk are based on very dodgy theories which are in themselves premised on totally wrong assumptions. This has very worrying implications for, to take only two examples, pensions and experts in all fields. He argues what we do not know (and as importantly what we do not know we don't know) is important and could well come and bite us!
One the negative side of things, I think the book starts well but then becomes hard to follow. In fact it becomes so hard to follow at points that I'm not sure I followed his arguments in any detail. The author does not show how each chapter follows from the past one and the book loses form (although I recognise that maybe this is a symptom of my `Platonic' thinking). I also found the continual references to various characters in the philosophical world eventually became tiring.
On balance I would recommend reading this book but I think the ideas of the author could have been expressed in a far clearer fashion, and, although I appreciate he is trying to overturn conventional thinking, he should start by using current concepts so his ideas can be followed (i.e. setting out clear chapters etc), then seeking to persuade us to change our ways of thinking.
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Summary: enjoyable but sometimes irritating
Comment: This book is for most part engagingly written and full of entertaining stories and provocative ideas. It makes you reconsider things you take for granted in life and reevaluate your own perspective of the future. But at times I couldn't help feeling that the author was just too full of himself, too pleased with his own ideas and too disparaging towards other people's. Not only does this create a negative feeling but it also works against the book's objectivity. How can a theory be impartial and objective when its author is so in love with himself and his own ideas? Nevertheless this book is a very rewarding read. I would also recommend Nudge and Making Time - Nudge makes you realise how easy it would be to change human behaviour for the better, while Making Time is full of very provocative and stimulating ideas about how we perceive time and how we can control it in our lives. Making Time: Why Time Seems to Pass at Different Speeds and How to Control It
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Summary: A great topic in a not so great book
Comment: Black swans are highly improbable events, with a large impact that seem explainable after they have happened. In this 300 page book Nassim Nicholas Taleb tries to convince us that black swans are all around us, they have always been and they always will. And as far as I am concerned he has certainly convinced me.
I didn't have very much trouble reading through NNT's arrogance, but some other things annoyed me more. The book is sometimes overly simplistic and very hostile towards people who's daily life revolves around dealing with uncertainty: statisticians, doctors, people in finance ... The study of improbably events is a hard but important aspect of statistics and there is a lot of useful -and practical- things to say about it. NNT doesn't seem to share this oppinion: quote: "forget everything you learned in college statistics". Cognitive science also teaches us a lot about why people underestimate certain probabilities so NNT's explanations are not very new; again, I think very little credit to academics is given here.
Although I got a little bored at times, I think all in all The Black Swan is a decent book which won't change your life.
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