Who?
People that like economics, sociology, psychology, politics, or being brainy.
When?
Whenever you get to it. There’s no rush.
Why?
The Black Swan is at the very least interesting for purely intellectual reasons.
Best Quote
When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.
Review
I tried to read this book once, but gave up not because it wasn’t interesting. It was. But rather, because I could not see how I would apply it to my work, and honestly, my time comes at enough of a premium that I don’t choose to make time for things that I’m not going to make use of in my career. A month or two after giving it up, Kim Alfreds strongly recommended that I go back to it, which I did. I’m glad that I finished reading it because it was a good book, and I can definitely apply what I learned to things in my personal life, but strictly within my career, I’m at a loss for how I’m really going to use this information.
The Black Swan is all about the idea that some things, and increasingly more things, are simply unpredictable. The name itself stems from the fact that Europeans believed that a defining characteristic of a swan was that it is white until they saw a black swan in Australia. They had no way to predict that swans could be black because it simply wasn’t in their model that that could be a possibility. Similarly, Taleb argues that many things in life are unpredictable because we do not possess the faculties to take every potential event into account.
Last Word
I found Taleb’s argument fascinating, if at times a little over my head honestly, but in the time since I have read this book (now twice), I still have not encountered any situation in which I have used the information outside of a normal intellectual debate. As such, you should read The Black Swan is a worthwhile read if it sounds interesting to you and you don’t already have something that will more directly impact you to read.
