This book has diminishing returns on the time spent reading it. Taleb's jeremiad is directed against - well - everyone who is not as enlightened as he is. I trudged through this book because - well - everyone is reading it and enlightened people should know how to comment on it. There, I did it. Now I can look down on all those people out there who aren't enlightened like Taleb. And now, me.Taleb is actually on to something important if you can tolerate his self-importance enough to filter his v...

I can summarize this book in two words: Shit happens.Actually, I should be more fair since the author spent 300 pages laying out his beliefs and arguing his conclusions. The real summary of this book should be: Shit happens more often than you think.The author, Taleb, rails against economics, most philosophers, and the way we incorporate news to allow us to make sense of events and everyday happenings. He wants us to unlearn the way we think and learn, while destroying the modern beliefs in stat...

First, a disclaimer. I am, professionally, a statistician. I do not have a Ph.D. in my field because I feel that statisticians with Ph.D.'s are devoid of practicality and usefulness to the real world. I work at a factory where I assist engineers in better understanding how processes work and making things better. I generally feel that I make a worthwhile contribution to the world. I bought and read this book because it was critical of statisticians. I do not believe in surrounding myself with 'y...

If you skipped your Systems, Statistics, or Random Variables classes in college, or if you think you know more than everyone else on Wall Street, then read this book. It will reaffirm what you already know. To the rest of you: this book will reaffirm what you thought you knew when you were 5 or 6...with an updated vocabulary. I put this book down after the first chapter, but thought I would give it another chance, that I was being unfair. When I read the second chapter (which is a metaphor for w...

This book profoundly nasty and intellectually demented. Taleb a classic science denier; oscillating between anti-science and pseudo-intellectual arguments. When some scientist says something he likes, he misrepresents it to fit his narrative. When the scientific consensus is against him, he cries grand conspiracy theory or slanders the methods of science. His argumentation in this book is like a case study in logical fallacies and crank red flags.Special pleading.Ignoring disconfirming evidence

This felt like it was trying to be the next The Tipping Point or Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything and just failed spectacularly, on all counts. Most importantly, perhaps, was that it was dull and a chore to read. In the little footnotes suggesting a chapter was unneccessary for a nontechnical reader and could be skipped (read: you are too dumb to understand this chapter, so don't even bother), like Chapter 15, I gladly took his advice because it meant one le...

Taleb is a pretty good writer, but I thought this was a very uneven book. As I read it I was constantly alternating between "Wow, that's a really great insight, a great way of presenting it" and "Gee, who doesn't realize that?", or even "That just seems flat-out wrong".It's a book that should have been read by the quantitative analysts ("quants") working for the hedge funds and investment banks in early 2008; but it probably wouldn't have made much difference in the financial melt-down that foll...

This review will be comprised of two parts: a review of the ideas presented and a review of the way in which it is written(A) The ideasThere is no question here, Taleb is an erudite and intelligent scholar. His take on epistomology and the scientific method breathe fresh air into the subject and gloss it with some 21st century context.It would be difficult for me to overstate the importance of the black swan problem in modern life and the degree to which we are, as societies, unaware of its impa...

Not as overbearingly arrogant as others claim; in fact, often very self depreciating.More seriously, his writing style is terribly confusing, made worse by my own unfamiliarity with the subject and his insistence on personal jargon standing in for concepts. Very anectdotal as well as making use of "thought experiments" to illustrate concepts that could have done with more explanation and less story. Yes, I get his point that stories help us learn, but I would argue that stories work best as anal...

Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses "black swans", unexpected and life-changing events, and how life is far more uncertain than most believe it to be. He also examines, in-depth, how we fool ourselves into believing reality is otherwise by various means like confirmation bias (we look for evidence to support our existing beliefs) and narrative fallacies (the tendency to describe existence using linear stories when reality is far more complicated).Mix in a heaping dose of storytelling and autobiograp...

This is a book that raises a number of very important questions, but chief among them is definitely the question of how the interplay between a good idea and an insufferable author combine to effect the reading experience? This author is an a-hole. Full stop. He's dismissive, chronically insecure, unstructured and hostile towards his detractors. He engages in what may be the lowest form of rhetoric by pre-emptively attacking any critics (even before they've had the chance to come forward) as too...

"We never learn."Here I am, on a beach in Greece, trying to put my thoughts together about this book, which I have enjoyed more than I expected, but at the same time, annoyed me here and there with the writing, which is all over the place."We are social animals" - how true is this statement! I never realized this until I worked more than a year from home. I have always considered myself somewhat antisocial, but I was proved wrong. When I returned to the office, I felt like I was in vacation, and...

It has been more than two months since I read this book and only now I succeed in writing a review about what this book can mean for a historian. That says something about how difficult it is to separate the problematic aspects of this book (the arrogant and polemical tone) from the real content. Because Taleb does have something to say for those who look at the past.For the sake of clarity, firstly his definition of Black Swans: these are unexpected events, both negative and positive, with a hu...

Okay, let's see if I got it straight...An anti-academic academic weaves a non-narrative narrative about predicting the unpredictable into the theory that rigid theories are bad.Oh, and count on things you can't conceive of happening happening.Something like that.Taleb's observations on the expectations and biases we hold, especially when estimating risk or uncertainty, are pretty dead on. His key practical point is about the need for a NON-parametric look at any situation in which low-probabilit...

Wall-banger at page 64. This might not be the final rating. I entertain the possibility of picking this up again, but at the moment I cannot bear the thought. The author is an annoying schmuck and that overshadows the concepts, which are quite interesting. You want to learn something useful within the same genre, pick up "Thinking, fast and slow" by Daniel Kahneman instead.