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  • Look forward to reading this one since I enjoyed "Fooled by Randomness" by the same author.

    

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• ― mortonfox said on May 18, 2007 about the Hardcover edition| Add your feedback

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  • I really wanted to like this book, but its signal:noise ratio is far too low.

    

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• ― pktechgirl said on Jul 23, 2008 about the Hardcover edition| Add your feedback

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  • This book is a bit harder to follow than Taleb's last effort. He presents most of his concepts in short understandable snippets, but they do not always flow together easily. Ironically, he refers repeatedly about "missing the forest for the trees", while the writing style in this book lends itsel ... Continue

    This book is a bit harder to follow than Taleb's last effort. He presents most of his concepts in short understandable snippets, but they do not always flow together easily. Ironically, he refers repeatedly about "missing the forest for the trees", while the writing style in this book lends itself to that predicament for the reader.

    That said, the concepts do flow together well in the end, and mulling over Taleb's views of life's dynamics is a very refreshing exercise in thought. Big thumbs up for the concept and ideas, only one thumb up for the style in which they are presented.

    

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• ― Bossdog said on Nov 15, 2007 about the Hardcover edition| 1 feedback| 1 feedback

A black swan is a highly improbably event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes the event 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 personal lives. But because humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities, we are unable to truly estimate opportunities and are not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the "impossible". In this revelatory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don't know. He offers surprisingly simple tricks for dealing with black swans and benefiting from them. Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications, The Black Swan is a landmark book that will change the way you look at the world.

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