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The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Random House
April 2007
On Sale: April 17, 2007
400 pages
ISBN: 1400063515
EAN: 9781400063512
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction | Non-Fiction Philosphy
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. Now, in
this revelatory book, Taleb explains everything we know
about what we don’t know. He offers surprisingly simple
tricks for dealing with black swans and benefiting from
them. 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 tobusiness to
probability theory. The Black Swan is a landmark book–
itself a black swan.
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