Essay on the Black Swan

Socrates “I only know that I know nothing” is well suited to describe the main ideas of the book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “Black Swan. Under the sign of unpredictability.” For many years, Taleb explores the problem of “black swans” – ie, absolutely unpredictable events, of them same and colorfully depicts in the book

The basic idea Taleb is that the world is full of “black swans” – unpredictable events, which at one point tremendously change our world or the lives of people who have experienced them.

Especially indicative financial statistics on the exchange trading in the past 50 years, where the bulk of revenue has been received within 10 days … all in different years. Taleb, as a trader, mostly, of course, adheres to economic borders.

In the book, Taleb open and a lot of criticism of experts, teaches the reader to not rely entirely on the “expert” opinion. Somewhere leads this quite strong evidence, somewhere in there.

In general, the book is entertaining, is positively charged and a moderate attitude of healthy skepticism, which gives an interesting point of view on the theory of probability.

Can be interesting to a wider audience.

However, in spite of the interesting topic and the excitement with which the narrator draws the reader into their theories, have books and quite significant drawbacks. The first, basic, and quite unforgivable Taleb, is that the author is quite a long time at the beginning of the book, for a few dozen pages, says, they say – “Now, now, the main thing – the experience, and a little further, I will explain to you all with specific examples.

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” Even the phrase gives amazing that I liked wildly: “Ideas come and go, stories remain.” That’s how. Handsomely. Exactly. And in the end? Shish you with gulkin nose stories. The lion’s share of all reinforcing the idea of ​​Taleb’s “stories” – is the author’s thought experiments

The second drawback -. Excessive volume. Author revolves around the same themes and ideas, by repeating them from chapter to chapter. As a result, the reader’s attention is scattered, not concentrated, it becomes boring, automatically blokiruesh repetitions. Conciseness would give the material greater value

The third -. Despite the fact that the author argues that it is necessary to look at the world more widely, he adheres only their theories, at times, seems to confuse cause and effect. Too clearly divided into black and white. The example of a “swimmer’s body.” First Taleb says that initially believed that “the swimmer’s body” – is formed by training. But then I realized – because man has become swimmer is due to the fact that he has such a body, ie, genetically predisposed! Mol – dwarf will not go to the swimmers, and if you go – it grows up at the expense of training. But, for some reason, is not considered the relationship model that a) a person becomes a swimmer due to genetic predispositions; b) the final “swimmer’s body” (here, though you can argue about the meaning of the word in the sense of – “Figure”) – formed because of the training .