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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
  • Written by: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  • Narrated by: Joe Ochman
  • Length: 15 hrs and 48 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (210 ratings)

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The Black Swan, Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility" cover art

The Black Swan, Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility"

Written by: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Narrated by: Joe Ochman
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Publisher's 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.

©2010 Nassim Nicholas Taleb (P)2018 Random House Audio

What the critics say

“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"

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    4 out of 5 stars

Worthy of a reread

this was an excellent book, and a much-needed corrective 2 our overconfidence in our own knowledge. the exposition was exceptionally clear and his polemical Style was extremely entertaining.

parts of tellabs social critique we're weaker or misguided, but his Central thesis was highly persuasive. I especially appreciated the essay and Technical discussion at the end of the book. this essay was added to the second edition and was not present in the original text.

this book stands out as one of the few texts worthy of a reread. this is not because the ideas presented were especially difficult, but rather because the illusion of knowledge is particularly difficult to dispel.

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3 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars

Very disappointing

I heard great things about this book and I love business books so I was looking forward to it. It was billed as a new outlook that explained why the financial markets would be different after 2008 than before. It turns out that it is basically just a guy that made a lucky call on the markets falling by using options. He was able to market himself and hype the story but beyond that there was nothing of value in the book. It will not teach you anything about the financial markets or how you should think about investing. It just is a self-appreciating account of a guy who made a lucky guess.

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

amazing book

it was a fantastic experience listening to this book, although the first a few chapters were a little vague for me but once I understood the points Mr. Taleb making, I was blown away by them!

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1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Prepare to be destroyed (and reborn)

At first it might seem walkey-talkey, but NNT walks his talk with rigorous math too.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Long, but with good points about established norms

it is quite long. But the points brought forward are challenging and makes you question established norms about how things work.
a bit of humor here and there helps make it an enjoyable listening experience.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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  • Boz
  • 2022-12-19

Lotsa wisdom

not only for trading, most things apply for life in general. nntaleb does a good job at philosophizing how we should deal with incomplete info, risk, and uncertainty.

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Robust and Humorous.

Robust and humorous. Perfect for long, slow walks and bursts of intensity. A sober guide to Antifragilty.

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very interesting approach

it wasn't easy to follow the narrative and technical explanations, but when you push through, you see the final picture.

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Very powerful ideas on uncertainty.

Very interesting book. I just wish he didn't name drop so many people he disagreed with.

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NNT needs to get off his soap box

I picked up the book because of the topic and the good reviews about the insights the author has.

Well... I do believe the author has some important points to make, and his assertion that gaussian distributions are fallible and one should understand its limitations and be prepared for it. Unfortunately, the message get lost in the non-stop ranting and endless put down of the 'scientific establishment'. I don't know if he intentionally use the abrasive tone to attract the readers' attention; or that just the way he is. In either case, the result is probably 15 hours worth of ceaseless ranting; and 48 minutes of meaningful insight.

On the rare ocassion that he actually have something useful to say ... it was spent on explaining the problem. But what is the answer? The author did suggest that he does have solutions to mitigate these non-gaussian, black swan events. And then he went on bashing the scientific establishment and forgot to tell us what the solutions look like.

In the end, I was left with some hints of brilliant, and maybe even original, thoughts. But that got drown out by what an arrogant, self-absorbed, bitter man that have a bone to grind.

Very disappointed at the result.

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