Book review: The Black Swan
It took me some time, but I finally finished reading "The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb some weeks ago.
One lesson I learned is this: if a book requires thinking and paying attention and your usual reading time is in the train after working for 8 hours, then the reading will not go very fast.
While The Black Swan is currently a very popular book in some circles, I doubt that my lj-friends belong in those circles. So first, a summary of the Idea of the book; the point of view the author wants to get across.
Note, that this is how I interpret what the main points of the book are and naturally the author may have had some other highlights or nuances in mind.
Black Swans are extremely rare events, but with an extremely large impact. The success of Google, 9/11, the destruction of Pompeii, the success of Harry Potter, the current credit crunch... all are Black Swans. The name comes from the fact that the entire Western world was absolutely convinced that all swans were white... until Australia was discovered.
The point is that these extremely rare events are highly unpredictable, yet greatly influence our lives. So the smaller, more predictable uncertainty, which forecasters usually focus on are therefore not really important. In order words: a large part of my job is pointless.
However, human nature ignores the existence of Black Swans. Afterwards, we try to explain our way out of them, saying "yeah, we could've seen it coming for these reasons". Also, it is human nature to overestimate how certain you are of your estimations. And then there is the problem of silent evidence: you'll only hear the success stories, because they are the ones that survive. People, who pray, and survive a shipwreck claim praying works. You don't hear about the people, who prayed, and then died. This gives us a false idea of what's really going on.
To be honest, Taleb gives many more arguments on human nature versus Black Swans and why we are blind to them. However, I cannot summarize them all here, because I simply fail to remember them. It may be because I read the book sporadically over a long period of time. It may also be, because regardless of his qualities as a thinker, I do not consider him to be an excellent writer.
He does keep trying to show the red line going through the book and how the different chapters are connected. However, as I was reading the book, I did not feel like I knew how this chapter was supposed to connect to what I've read before.
The overall impression that I get from Taleb based on the book is that he is a "zelfingenomen, tegendraads ventje". He considers himself a true thinker and scoffs at anything 'mainstream'. He enjoys kicking against the establishment, sometimes it seems simply for the sake of kicking. So anybody, who has won a Nobel prize is not a genius, because real geniuses are always overlooked.
It is an attitude, which in my mind has nothing to do with presenting your arguments and ideas in a convincing manner, which is what the purpose of the book should be.
Also, he first spends about 30 pages describing his life and how that lead to him getting his Idea. And then he finally explains what his actual Idea is. All the while I was just thinking "get to the point". The beginning of a book should be grabbing. I also didn't like the fact that he kept explaining his points of view using the anecdote of Yevgenia, a Black Swan, and then admitting in a footnote that he made her up.
So, in the end, my opinion is this: I think some of his ideas are interesting and worth knowing, even if you'd disagree with him. However, from a writing perspective, the book is not a very fun read. So unless you are really interested into the topic of uncertainty and risk, I'd suggest sticking to the Wikipedia page instead.
Lonneke
One lesson I learned is this: if a book requires thinking and paying attention and your usual reading time is in the train after working for 8 hours, then the reading will not go very fast.
While The Black Swan is currently a very popular book in some circles, I doubt that my lj-friends belong in those circles. So first, a summary of the Idea of the book; the point of view the author wants to get across.
Note, that this is how I interpret what the main points of the book are and naturally the author may have had some other highlights or nuances in mind.
Black Swans are extremely rare events, but with an extremely large impact. The success of Google, 9/11, the destruction of Pompeii, the success of Harry Potter, the current credit crunch... all are Black Swans. The name comes from the fact that the entire Western world was absolutely convinced that all swans were white... until Australia was discovered.
The point is that these extremely rare events are highly unpredictable, yet greatly influence our lives. So the smaller, more predictable uncertainty, which forecasters usually focus on are therefore not really important. In order words: a large part of my job is pointless.
However, human nature ignores the existence of Black Swans. Afterwards, we try to explain our way out of them, saying "yeah, we could've seen it coming for these reasons". Also, it is human nature to overestimate how certain you are of your estimations. And then there is the problem of silent evidence: you'll only hear the success stories, because they are the ones that survive. People, who pray, and survive a shipwreck claim praying works. You don't hear about the people, who prayed, and then died. This gives us a false idea of what's really going on.
To be honest, Taleb gives many more arguments on human nature versus Black Swans and why we are blind to them. However, I cannot summarize them all here, because I simply fail to remember them. It may be because I read the book sporadically over a long period of time. It may also be, because regardless of his qualities as a thinker, I do not consider him to be an excellent writer.
He does keep trying to show the red line going through the book and how the different chapters are connected. However, as I was reading the book, I did not feel like I knew how this chapter was supposed to connect to what I've read before.
The overall impression that I get from Taleb based on the book is that he is a "zelfingenomen, tegendraads ventje". He considers himself a true thinker and scoffs at anything 'mainstream'. He enjoys kicking against the establishment, sometimes it seems simply for the sake of kicking. So anybody, who has won a Nobel prize is not a genius, because real geniuses are always overlooked.
It is an attitude, which in my mind has nothing to do with presenting your arguments and ideas in a convincing manner, which is what the purpose of the book should be.
Also, he first spends about 30 pages describing his life and how that lead to him getting his Idea. And then he finally explains what his actual Idea is. All the while I was just thinking "get to the point". The beginning of a book should be grabbing. I also didn't like the fact that he kept explaining his points of view using the anecdote of Yevgenia, a Black Swan, and then admitting in a footnote that he made her up.
So, in the end, my opinion is this: I think some of his ideas are interesting and worth knowing, even if you'd disagree with him. However, from a writing perspective, the book is not a very fun read. So unless you are really interested into the topic of uncertainty and risk, I'd suggest sticking to the Wikipedia page instead.
Lonneke