The Black Swan, Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility"
Incerto, Book 2
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The Black Swan, Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility"
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Narrated by:
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Joe Ochman
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Written by:
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb
About this listen
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 AudioWhat 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"
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Kyledriv3r
- 2024-04-16
Impactful lessons on randomness, reality, and nature
One of the most impactful books I have read in my life. I remember that I was a young adolescent, confused about the world around me, when I picked this up for a read. Little did I know at the time that the seeds to my understanding of reality were planted during my reading of this.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 2019-10-23
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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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 2020-09-16
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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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Tony
- 2021-01-23
NNT is not for everyone
I have to re listen to this one and to read the physical book several times, because NNT's books are not easy to grasp on the first pass.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Mo Rahmani
- 2020-09-05
Revolutionalizing
I had a general knoedge of the concelt and the book but this was nothing compared to what I actually learned through the book. The whole illusion of knowledge and ability to forecast plus so many intriguing philosophical ideas. the voice of the narrator was very good and consistent with the expected tone for this material.
Thanks Nassim. love to read more of your books!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Lloyd
- 2022-04-14
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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Overall5 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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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 2019-03-16
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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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- George
- 2022-09-19
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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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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- Jorge Campos
- 2023-06-28
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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