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The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: Difference between revisions
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (view source)
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{{review|The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable|Nassim Nicholas Taleb|March 8, 2008 | {{review|The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable|Nassim Nicholas Taleb|R220X1OSKAV4LU|March 8, 2008|Bombastic and entertaining, but not as devastating, original or clever as the author thinks it is}} | ||
{{author|Nassim Nicholas Taleb}} is, in equal parts, enthralling and utterly infuriating. He has written a book so sure of its own certitude, that has one effective lesson: there can be no certitude. Taleb makes the enormous mistake of believing (and saying) that he’s solved the eternal verities — that after millennia of philosophical, ethical, political, economic and social debate: thrust and counter-thrust — that mathematics and physics can save the day. | {{author|Nassim Nicholas Taleb}} is, in equal parts, enthralling and utterly infuriating. He has written a book so sure of its own certitude, that has one effective lesson: there can be no certitude. Taleb makes the enormous mistake of believing (and saying) that he’s solved the eternal verities — that after millennia of philosophical, ethical, political, economic and social debate: thrust and counter-thrust — that mathematics and physics can save the day. | ||
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It might, as he points out, seem rational to calculate the forecast proitability of a casino on the odds available through time at the tables, but that is to ignore the risk of something unexpected happening such as a bomb going off in the lobby. But the nature of unexpected things is that you can’t anticipate them. That’s what it means to be unexpected. | It might, as he points out, seem rational to calculate the forecast proitability of a casino on the odds available through time at the tables, but that is to ignore the risk of something unexpected happening such as a bomb going off in the lobby. But the nature of unexpected things is that you can’t anticipate them. That’s what it means to be unexpected. | ||
That’s ultimately the conclusion of this unnecessarily long book: “Stuff happens". The interesting material is mostly covered in existing books written by more talented and less egotistical authors (I | That’s ultimately the conclusion of this unnecessarily long book: “Stuff happens". The interesting material is mostly covered in existing books written by more talented and less egotistical authors (I recommend {{author|Philip Ball}}’s {{br|Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another}}) and the implication of the [[power law]] on the behaviour of markets is the subject of {{author|Benoit Mandelbrot}}’s very good {{br|The (Mis) Behaviour of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin And Reward}}. | ||