The Black Swan: Second Edition by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Black Swan: Second Edition by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A black swan is a highly unusual event that has three main characteristics: it is unpredictable; it has a large impact; and, after the fact, we construct an explanation that makes it appear less random and more predictable than it was.For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underpin practically everything about our world, from the racial divide to the financial crisis.

Why do we wait until black swans appear before acknowledging their existence? According to Taleb, part of the answer is that humans are predisposed to learn specifics when they should be focusing on generalities. We focus on what we already know and repeatedly fail to examine what we don't know. As a result, we are unable to adequately estimate opportunities, are too prone to the temptation to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and are not open enough to rewa

For years, Taleb has investigated how we deceive ourselves into believing we know more than we do. We limit our thinking to the irrelevant and insignificant, while major events continue to surprise and affect our world.In this revelatory book, Taleb will change the way you look at the world, and this second edition includes a new philosophical and empirical study, On Robustness and Fragility, a new philosophical and empirical essay on how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do.

The Black Swan is a remarkable book--itself a black swan--with wit, irreverence, and strange stories to tell. Taleb has a polymathic mastery of areas spanning from cognitive science to business to probability theory.