The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Taleb. 

2/5 rating. 

Book #104 of 2019. Read September 1, 2019.

This book talked about an important misconception about the impact of “black swans.” These are events that are rare, have a disproportionate and extreme impact, and are explained after the fact as “explainable and predictable.” While there is great discussion about this and the reality that the world rarely holds to the bell curve, Nassim drones on through a lot of the book. Also, I did not know it was possible to be so self-absorbed and insufferable about yourself in a book. Just realize that the world is shaped by unpredictable changes, and save yourself from reading this book!!

Quotes:

“First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.”

“What is surprising is not the magnitude of our forecast errors, but our absence of awareness of it.”

“Those who believe in the unconditional benefits of past experience should consider this pearl of wisdom allegedly voiced by a famous ship’s captain: ‘But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident…of any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort.’  – J. Smith, 1907, Captain, RMS Titanic“

“From the standpoint of the turkey, the nonfeeding of the one thousand and first day is a Black Swan. For the butcher, it is not, since its occurrence is not unexpected. So you can see here that the Black Swan is a sucker’s problem. In other words, it occurs relative to your expectation.”

“This, perhaps, is true self-confidence: the ability to look at the world without the need to find signs that stroke one’s ego.”

“A life saved is a statistic; a person hurt is an anecdote. Statistics are invisible; anecdotes are salient.”

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