Nassim Nicholas Taleb- The Black Swan

The Black Swan

Penguin

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
2007

“If you hear a "prominent" economist using the word 'equilibrium,' or 'normal distribution,' do not argue with him; just ignore him, or try to put a rat down his shirt.”

It's not very often that I feel tempted to read two non-fiction books in a row, and it's even less often- almost never, in fact- that one of those books happens to be classified by its own publisher (Penguin, if you must know) as a book about economics. In truth, my decision to pick up The Black Swan from the 'miscellaneous' shelf at my local second-hand booke shoppe was merely one built by coincidence that I'm going to explain for no real reason; I'd been reading up on the film Black Swan (which, as everybody already knows, is bloody brilliant), which in turn led me to lightly reading up on the scientific philosophy. When I spotted Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book, the topic, the gushing quotes and the snazzy cover tempted me to pick it up.

Taleb is a guy who has plenty of experience working around areas involving risk and the economy; from his younger days as a Wall Street trader to his more recent exploits as a scientific adviser and a university professor, Taleb has met a seemingly-innumerable amount of experts (or idiotic experts) in various parts of the field of economics, and throughout this book offers a very personally-written take on the nature of the black swan phenomena (very briefly for those not aware, a black swan event is any kind of completely unexpected incident that disrupts the field of play; 9/11, for example, or the literal discovery of black swans in newly-discovered Australia), and on the many human reactions to them. Despite having worked around risk and risk advisers his whole career, Taleb's basic message is very simple; black swan events are so inherently unpredictable in many aspects of the world that it's a fools errand to try and predict them, so people should probably stop it.

To achieve his goals, and to ensure his book can appeal to the non-technical reader, Taleb mostly stays away from field-specific lexis and statistics to keep things much more personal; giving the readers lots of autobiographical information  and personal and impersonal anecdotes regarding famous figures in the fields of science, philosophy and business. At times it feels like he's bragging about knowing so many clever people, but Taleb, through years of practice writing essays and his previous book Fooled by Randomness is a talented and charismatic enough author to just about pull off his goals. Later on in the book Taleb does get a little technical, but even warns the reader beforehand so they can skip the chapter if they want to, which is nice.

Like the king of scientific non-fiction (and another name Taleb drops) Richard Dawkins, Taleb is a witty, interesting, and well-written individual, and it this was enough for me to quite enjoy a book that, in lesser hands, could've bored me senseless. Despite finding myself not particularly engrossed by the science, Taleb made me somewhat care about his agenda, which was enough to carry me through. I'm sure there are those with far, far more knowledge of statistics and economic fact who could read this book and absolutely hate it for its opinions, but I am devoid of all intelligence in this matter, and, as they say, ignorance is bliss. Well, not quite bliss, but general amusement nonetheless.