Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The black swan
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THE
BLACK
SWAN
The
I m pact of t h e
HIGHLY
IM
PROBABLE
Nassim
Nicholas Taleb
U.S.A.
$26.95
Canada $34.95
A BLACK SWAN is a highly improbable event
with three principal characteristics: It is unpre-
dictable; 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 oppor-
tunities, 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 our-
selves 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 reve-
latory book, Taleb explains everything we know
about what we don't know. He offers surprisingly
simple tricks for dealing with black swans and
ben-
efiting from them.
Elegant, startling, and universal in its applica-
tions,
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.
NASSIM
NICHOLAS TALEB has devoted his life to
immersing himself in problems of luck, uncertainty,
probability, and knowledge. Part literary essayist,
part empiricist, part no-nonsense mathematical
trader, he is currently taking a break by serving as
the Dean's Professor in the Sciences of Uncer-
tainty at the University of Massachusetts at
Amherst. His last book, the bestseller Fooled by
Randomness, has been published in twenty
lan-
guages. Taleb lives mostly in New York.
Jacket design: Thomas Beck Stvan
Jacket art: £ Photodisk/Getty Images
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Random House
New York, N.Y.
c 2007 by Random House, Inc.
Advance
praise for The Black Swan
"A
masterpiece."
—CHRIS
ANDERSON,
editor in
chief
of
Wired,
author of The
Long
Tail
"Recalls
the best of scientist/essayists like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay
Gould."
—MICHAEL
SCHRAGE,
author of
Serious
Play
"A
beautifully reflective and opinionated book, illustrated with Calvino-
like
fables, about the inevitable failure of attempts to reduce the complex-
ity
of the real world to simple black-and-white formulas."
—
EMANUEL
DERMAN,
author of My
Life
as a Quant
"A
fascinating and challenging critique ... I thoroughly enjoyed this
remarkable author's outside-the-box mix of thought experiments, stories,
and epistemology."
—El)
WAR
I)
0.
THORP,
author of
Beat
the
Dealer
"Nassim Taleb challenges us, his readers, to be as fearless as he is in punc-
turing
phony expertise. . . . Read this book."
—
PHILIP
E.
TETLOCK,
author of
Expert
Political
Judgment
"There's
more about the ways of the real world between the covers of The
Black
Swan
than
in the contents of a dozen libraries."
—TOM
PETERS,
author of M
Search
of
Excellence
Praise
for
Fooled
by Randomness
"[Fooled
by
Randomness]
is to conventional Wall Street wisdom approxi-
mately what Martin Luther's ninety-five theses were to the Catholic Church."
—
MALCOLM
GLADWELL,
author of
Blink
"Fascinating
. . . Taleb will grab you."
—PETER
L.
BERNSTEIN,
author of
Against
the
Gods
ISBN 978-1-4000-6351-2
ALSO
BY NASSIM NICHOLAS
TALEB
Fooled
by Randomness
THE
BLACK
SWAN
RANDOM
HOUSE ÛÏQ NEW YORK
Copyright
©
2007
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
All
rights reserved.
Published
in the
United States
by
Random House,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a
division
of
Random House, Inc., New
York.
RANDOM
HOUSE
and colophon are registered
trademarks
of
Random House, Inc.
ISBN
978-1-4000-6351-2
LIBRARY
OF
CONGRESS
CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION
DATA
Taleb,
Nassim.
The
black swan:
the
impact of the highly improbable
/
Nassim Nicholas
Taleb.
p.
cm.
Includes bibliographical references
and
index.
Contents: Part one—Umberto
Eco's
antilibrary,
or
how we seek
validation—Part two—We just can't predict—Part three—
Those
gray swans of extremistan—Part four—The
end.
ISBN
978-1-4000-6351-2
1. Uncertainty (Information
theory)—Social
aspects.
2.
Forecasting.
I.
Title.
Q375.T35
2007
003'.54—dc22
2006051093
Printed
in the
United States
of
America
on
acid-free
paper
www.atrandom.com
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Book
design
by
Casey
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