The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

This book reads like something created by the bad professor you had that never gives anybody A's, ever. And why not? Because, at least according to him, nobody is as smart as he is. Nobody. That's because nobody 'is' him. And he is the only smart person in the entire world. He is the Black Swan, smarter than anybody else by a quantum leap, according to Himself. How can he prove that he is so smart? He doesn't prove it, he just calls everybody else a moron instead. Why is he so smart? Well, he doesn't actually say, but if you cannot comprehend that he is by far and away the smartest person who ever lived, bar none, you must be a moron. And there you have it. The Black Swan in a nutshell.

So is he really that smart? Like many narcissists, he seems capable of convincing some people so. He did have one marginally clever thought, and here it is: don't throw out the outlier. To elaborate, outliers have curious and unique statistical behaviors and can be quite socially influential; outlier incidents can be predicted in retrospect, but never anticipated; and outlier events probably occur more frequently now than they every have, due to the influence of new media. Yeah, so what.

Like a classic narcissist (self-important to the point of indolence), he does not analyse his hypothesis in any way that would involve actual work (experimentation), at least none that he mentions. He may briefly claim that (I'm paraphrasing) "such analyses are impossible, you moron." He says his one good thought, says it again, quotes Hume, talks about himself and how great he is and how his people are downtrodden, and tosses out numerous extremely self-aggrandizing aspersions about philosophers and the people who study them. My favorite snotty comment was something like: as opposed to people who quote other philosophers, a few people who quote Hume have actually bothered to read Hume.

Probably a good half of the book is random narcissistic drivel, forty percent snide comments and ten percent the Black Swan idea, over and over again, with little new information presented.

What this guy needed was a good ghost writer, but I can't imagine sitting in a room with this guy for more than 10 minutes and not wanting to rip his throat out. I'm guessing all prospective ghost writers quit after being called morons and/or oppressors a few thousand times in a matter of hours.

Read a synopsis of the book for the one marginally interesting idea the guy ever had in his life if you want to, but I suggest you don't bother, because even his one idea is no big whoop-te-do. That is, don't bother to read this book unless you're trying to come up with character ideas for a really odious, pompous bad guy. In that case, this book is a goldmine.

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics." Nassim Taleb exudes a healthy disdain for traditional "Gaussian" statistics in his popular manifesto, The Black Swan. Jaded and toughened by several years as a derivatives trader on Wall Street, Taleb emerged from the profession with unique insights on how the world is missing the boat on analyzing risk. The book is certainly eye-opening, endeavoring to make its point in so many eclectic fashions that it's best consumed in small doses. It's a bit like reading Soros. The author doesn't pretend to toe the line on traditional perspective. In fact, he embraces such a healthy admiration for himself and his contrarian idea that it pays to step back every few pages and contemplate his assertions rather than taking too much of it at face value.

To his credit, Taleb makes some prescient comments in the book, originally published in 2007. Undoubtedly it's become a more popular read today than it was back then, with the global financial crisis now dominating the headlines. That footnote on p. 225 is a perfect example, in one fell swoop correctly asserting that Fanny [sic] Mae was "sitting on a barrel of dynamite", yet mis-spelling the company's name. A bit of editorial sloppiness notwithstanding, the book also suffers from being too wordy, with the same point being drilled home in chapter after erudite chapter, as if the reader were being forced to write "I UNDERSTAND THAT KURTOTIC RISKS ARE REALLY HARD TO PREDICT" 100 times on the blackboard.

I originally cracked open The Black Swan thinking that its lessons would be predominantly applicable to the world of investing. That's not the case. Although the author certainly made a killing as a professional trader, harvesting especially big gains during the crash of 1987 (see pp. 18-19 et al), he doesn't confine the black swan to the world of finance. Far from it. Sociology, economics, publishing, medicine, national security, and even the lowly turkey (see p. 41) - we all have plenty to gain by not losing sight of highly improbable risks.

Black Swan is without doubt the most disappointing book I have ever read in my life.

That I actually feel compelled to submit a review (for the first time in a decade) is testimony in itself. I hope that it will help somebody else avoid the utter waste of time and money that this book represents..


The key problems with this book are:

1. The complete lack of structure and flow. Imagine listening to somebody who digresses ad infinitum. At each turn in their storyline, at each anecdote, you're wondering "ok, where is this going? how is *this* related to the overall message you're trying to communicate?". But no, they continue with the next little incomplete anecdote ad nauseum.

2. The intrusion of the author's personality into the book itself. And from what I've gathered, the author is a self-obsessed bore. All the references to himself, the people he's met (often with no explanation of the pertinence to the storyline), name-checking obscure philosophers & economist ('obscure' to the layman anyway) for seemingly no reason other than to appear intellectual. The author spends so long pointing out others' mistakes and showing how others are so stupid and he's so smart, and it's simply not nice to listen to people like that.

3. Poor writing style. As mentioned already, this really needed an editor.


I laboured with it for hours but eventually had to put it down when 60% of the way through.

I persevered that long because I thought there must be some pay-back further along the line; but no ... no amusing or insightful stories/anecdotes to make the medicine easier to swallow - this is simply a long, dry, dull read.


If you are looking for an enjoyable and insightful read along the lines of Tipping Point, Blink, Freakonomics, Outliers etc then this is definitely NOT it.

This book is a Black Swan. It certainly doesn't owe its success to the content.

(I actually bought it on a whim based on its position in the bestseller list and Chris Anderson describing it as "mindblowing... a masterpiece" - shame on you, Chris).

Actually, it's not a Black Swan... it was just well marketed. Shame about the product.

Do not use your valuable time reading through this entire book. Taleb provides some solid theories with good support. However, this book could have been condensed into about 50 pages and he could have conveyed his entire message. Much of the book is stream of consciousness and it is difficult to see how what he is currently discussing ties to what he just discussed, and where the discussion will go next. Additionally, many of his theories, while applicable in the constrained set of circumstances he presents, are not widely applicable.
Presentation of the Black Swan was a useful backdrop for other discussion in the book, but the Black Swan was really not what the majority of the book was about. Instead, it branched off into other theories, not directly supporting the Black Swan theory, and in many cases, unrelated to other parts of the book.
While Taleb (clearly qualified in this area of empiricist discussion), at times, wrote in engaging prose, too many times he engaged in name-dropping and abstract theoretical presentation that distracted the reader (without an extensive knowledge of mathematical theorists). It was difficult to determine an appropriate audience for this book. Sometimes it seemed anecdotal, targeting the lay mathematician, while at other times it dove so deep as to only interest a Ph.D. in related topics.
Overall, it was a struggle to get through this book and while there was some scattered, solid discussion, I was able to take very little away that will be applicable. Not an enjoyable or informative read.

One of those books that can change the way you see the world and (as usual for such books) it does so with humor, clear unpretentious language and examples. As another reviewer already said, the point of the book could have been stated in a couple of lines, but then we'd miss the great writing and more importantly, the internalization of what Taleb is talking about.

Some of my favorite parts:

* Turkey Problem (Induction): For 999 days, the turkey is loved and cared for by human beings. Why should it worry or have any doubts. But then on the 1000th day there's a surprise awaiting it. The title illustrates this point too. It only takes one contradiction, one knife, one black swan to prove wrong an infinity of verifications.

* Extremistan vs. Mundanistan: In a stadium full of people, one person, even the tallest in the world, won't offset the average height by very much. Same with age, or with weight, or caloric intake. These qualities are of Mundanistan. However, with things like money (ie. Bill Gates enters the stadium) one person can outweigh the entire group. Things like net worth are from Extremistan. Our prediction models are based on Mundanistan, however many of the things that can impact us most are from Extremistan (ie. impact of disease, medicine, wars, weather) and hence our prediction models don't work.

* Ludic Fallacy (seeing the map as the terrain) via Brooklyn Tony and the actuary. This is my favorite part of the book!

Thought experiment at a bar (this isn't an exact quote, sounded much better in the book):
Taleb: I tossed a fair coin 99 times and got heads each time. What are my odds of heads on the next toss?
Dr. John (the actuary): 50/50.
Tony: At least 99 to 1.
John: But why? The previous tosses have nothing to do with the next one.
Tony: You're either full of crap or a pure sucker to buy that fifty percent business. The coin's gotta be loaded.

I love it!