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The Black Swan, Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility"
- Incerto, Book 2
- Narrated by: Joe Ochman
- Length: 15 hrs and 48 mins
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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.
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)
What listeners say about The Black Swan, Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility"
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Mr D Owers
- 24-06-19
Excellent
Not like any book I read before. A philosophical viewpoint, elegantly explained with a great sort of condescending wit. Very funny in places and very well narrated. I watched NNT on YouTube and I actually think the narrator's voice suits this book better than the author's. It gets quite technical in places but never too much. 5 stars.
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6 people found this helpful
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- D Roberts
- 30-09-20
Two minutes-worth squeezed into 15 hours
This audiobook somehow stretches a 2 minute idea to over 15 hours (although I sped it up to x1.7 - surprising how good Audible's player is as I could still listen perfectly well after getting used to it). The narrator was perfectly good and I pitied him having to deliver the bad dad jokes and swipes at others (unnecessary and smug).
The book's central point is that occasional extreme events can occur unexpectedly and can change everything. I didn't find this revolutionary. Other than that the book is mostly padding IMO.
Taleb calls the normal-distribution (bell curve) "the great intellectual fraud" but I heard nothing that convinced me of that (either mathematically or in application). Listen carefully and it turns out that all this criticism is not of the distribution at all, but the way he believes other people misuse it when trying to predict future trends in complex random systems. A perfectly reasonable criticism itself, but not of the normal distribution, which he admits is perfectly and mathematically sound when applied correctly, despite referring to it as a great fraud! In any case, I wondered if the misuse is really as wide spread as he implies? I don't get that impression, and he certainly didn't convince me of that point. I got the feeling he was exaggerating the whole issue to frame his own stance (i.e. setting up a straw man).
I did NOT enjoy this book. I was not convinced by his ideas. The tone is smug and conceited (he continually refers to categories of others as 'suckers' and I can't help thinking he is imagining his 'readers' who are lining his pockets). I only listened to this book as a small piece of 'self-directed learning' to add to my annual CPD for my professional body; I am glad I have finished it and will not be revisiting it.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Pepe
- 04-04-20
Interesting but too long for its content
This book discusses important views about life, risks, economics... but it soon becomes repetitive. The author spends a good deal of the book laughing at other people who he considers ignorants. That actually makes the book a bit funny but it is still too long for the message it has.
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5 people found this helpful
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- O
- 23-02-20
Nerdy for sure!
Very nerdy. Also very interesting. But if you’re an ordinary person don’t expect to fully understand most of it. A book summary would be good in addition considering the length of the book, but I’ll jade to find one elsewhere
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4 people found this helpful
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- sophia murday
- 29-01-20
Unbearable
I had to quit halfway through the first chapter. This is absolutely ghastly and unbearably smug
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3 people found this helpful
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- Kim
- 17-06-21
Overall great, savage, but detouring book.
This book is great. Sometimes it strays from the course, but there is a reason for it. Taleb must introduce concepts with small stories that at the first glance don't have anything to do with Black Swans. Taleb is savage to Nobel laureates, mathematicians, politians and especially to Economists. As an future Economist, he fiercely attacked everything I have been taught, and I loved it!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Phil Winston
- 15-06-19
Amazing
Probably the single best book I've ever read in my entire life. Seriously, I couldn't stop listening to it.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 08-02-24
the importance of understanding risk, %, real risk, emotional imagined risk.
I didn't like that it was to short, even if there are much shorter books.
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- Brian Maunder
- 27-11-23
Captivating Title
This was recommended to me by a friend. Sadly it did not live up to my expectations or friends recommendation. Content is scattered and disjointed. Also the delivery is too fast. Long complicated sentences and paragraphs read but not with any real passion or message. Sounded like they were just 'going through the motions'....faster the better then it's over for them.
In summary, concept good, some intelligent thoughts but could have been better.
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- Przemyslaw
- 29-10-23
Arrogant tone, but overall interesting
When I started it I wasn't sure if I'm going to finish and it if I did I thought I'd give it 2/3 stars.
It got more informative over pages / minutes listened and less focused on rambling about "useless academics and philosophers".
It earned 4 stars with the ending essays, author seems to have gained a bit more humility / courtesy over time (although not too much). Ending essays were the best part.
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