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
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 AudioCritic Reviews
“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
- Jimmy
- 14-12-2022
Dense for the layman
It’s a hard to follow along with book. Need to hear it several times over to grasp the knowledge
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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
- Liziana Carter
- 17-08-2021
Taleb doesn't disappoint
"You are a Black Swan" - brilliant. My 4th Taleb book, he remains my favourite thinker.
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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
- Tim
- 21-12-2021
Excellente!!!!
This book really turned my life upside down in an exciting way and put a lot of things into perspective.
Will be reading a 2nd perhaps 3rd and 4th time!
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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
- Amazon Customer
- 25-03-2019
full of insights
it is map for how to live a life nothing short of it. it is not complete . i wish i had this when i was much younger
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Louis Cohalan
- 19-02-2019
Self-assured!
Well-read in a voice that sounds as self-assured as the material. Interesting and fun listen. Very relevant and transferable material. He likes making enemies though! They won’t be giving him the Nobel anytime soon!!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- Steve
- 31-10-2019
Very interesting and informative.
An excellent take down of experts that rely on statistics. Also an interesting read for anybody who has to deal with so called experts that never seem to get things right.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- craig oliver
- 13-02-2023
entertaining
enjoyed this thoroughly. quite a bit of it went over my head but entertaining to listen to
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 07-03-2023
I’m a black swan believer
Content was great. Covered all the key points. The only suggestion is to cull the book down. Whilst the author spends a lot of time being critical of academia (justifiable) he spends an undue amount of his time demonstrating his views by by using academic reasoning. Anyway, it is a great book. Most relevant today.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Mr. Alan J. Mccartin
- 15-02-2022
Enlightening
So much to take in. Worth going through again. Plenty of sound bytes worth remembering.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 26-07-2020
A necessary read.
A valuable book for anyone who has an interest in insuring they have an understanding of the limits of the knowledge which they intend to apply.
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