Нассим Талеб - The Black Swan. The Impact of the Highly Improbable

PRAISE FOR THE BLACK SWAN

“Taleb not only has an explanation for [the crisis], he saw it coming.”

—DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times

“The hottest thinker in the world.”

—BRYAN APPLEYARD, The Sunday Times (London)

“Taleb is the real thing. [He] rightly understands that what’s brought the global banking system to its knees isn’t simply greed or wickedness but … intellectual hubris.

—JOHN GRAY, author of Straw Dogs (as quoted in GQ )

“The new sage … The trader turned author has emerged as the guru of the global financial meltdown. Not only is he riding high in the bestseller lists, his theory of black swan events has become the most seductive guide to our uncertain times.”

—The Observer

“[Taleb writes] in a style that owes as much to Stephen Colbert as it does to Michel de Montaigne.”

—The Wall Street Journal

“[This] is the lesson of Nassim Taleb … and also the lesson of our volatile times. There is more courage and heroism in defying the human impulse, in taking the purposeful and painful steps to prepare for the unimaginable.”

—MALCOLM GLADWELL, author of The Tipping Point

“[Taleb is] a genuinely significant philosopher … someone who is able to change the way we view the structure of the world through the strength, originality and veracity of his ideas alone.”

— GQ

“Long-standing critics of risk-modelling, such as … Taleb … are now hailed as seers.”

— The Economist

“A provocative macro-trend tome in the tradition of … The Tipping Point.”

— Time

“An eye-opening book, one that teases our intelligence … He is after big game, and he bags it.”

—ROGER LOWENSTEIN, Portfolio

“Erudite advice … The Black Swan is a richly enjoyable read with an important message.”

— Business Week

“Engrossing … a lively, sassy study of what’s not known.”

—FRANK WILSON, The Philadelphia Inquirer

“[An] engaging new book … The Black Swan has appealing cheek and admirable ambition.”

— The New York Times Book Review

“A rigorous meditation on the modern world.”

— The Daily Telegraph (London)

“Funny, quirky and thought-provoking … [Taleb is] engaging, lively and intelligent.”

— The Sunday Times (London)

ALSO BY NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB

Fooled by Randomness

To Benoît Mandelbrot,

a Greek among Romans

CONTENTS

Prologue

On the Plumage of Birds

What You Do Not Know

Experts and “Empty Suits”

Learning to Learn

A New Kind of Ingratitude

Life Is Very Unusual

Plato and the Nerd

Too Dull to Write About

The Bottom Line

Chapters Map

PART ONE: UMBERTO ECO’S ANTILIBRARY, OR HOW WE SEEK VALIDATION

Chapter 1: The Apprenticeship of an Empirical Skeptic

Anatomy of a Black Swan

On Walking Walks

“Paradise” Evaporated

The Starred Night

History and the Triplet of Opacity

Nobody Knows What’s Going On

History Does Not Crawl, It Jumps

Dear Diary: On History Running Backward

Education in a Taxicab

Clusters

Where Is the Show?

8¾ Lbs Later

The Four-Letter Word of Independence

Limousine Philosopher

Chapter 2: Yevgenia’s Black Swan

Chapter 3: The Speculator and the Prostitute

The Best (Worst) Advice

Beware the Scalable

The Advent of Scalability

Scalability and Globalization

Travels Inside Mediocristan

The Strange Country of Extremistan

Extremistan and Knowledge

Wild and Mild

The Tyranny of the Accident

Chapter 4: One Thousand and One Days, or How Not to Be a Sucker

How to Learn from the Turkey

Trained to Be Dull

A Black Swan Is Relative to Knowledge

A Brief History of the Black Swan Problem

Sextus the (Alas) Empirical

Algazel

The Skeptic, Friend of Religion

I Don’t Want to Be a Turkey

They Want to Live in Mediocristan

Chapter 5: Confirmation Shmonfirmation!

Zoogles Are Not All Boogles

Evidence

Negative Empiricism

Counting to Three

Saw Another Red Mini!

Not Everything

Back to Mediocristan

Chapter 6: The Narrative Fallacy

On the Causes of My Rejection of Causes

Splitting Brains

A Little More Dopamine

Andrey Nikolayevich’s Rule

A Better Way to Die

Remembrance of Things Not Quite Past

The Madman’s Narrative

Narrative and Therapy

To Be Wrong with Infinite Precision

Dispassionate Science

The Sensational and the Black Swan

Black Swan Blindness

The Pull of the Sensational

The Shortcuts

Beware the Brain

How to Avert the Narrative Fallacy

Chapter 7: Living in the Antechamber of Hope

Peer Cruelty

Where the Relevant Is the Sensational

Nonlinearities

Process over Results

Human Nature, Happiness, and Lumpy Rewards

The Antechamber of Hope

Inebriated by Hope

The Sweet Trap of Anticipation

When You Need the Bastiani Fortress

El desierto de los tártaros

Bleed or Blowup

Chapter 8: Giacomo Casanova’s Unfailing Luck: The Problem of Silent Evidence

The Story of the Drowned Worshippers

The Cemetery of Letters

How to Become a Millionaire in Ten Steps

A Health Club for Rats

Vicious Bias

More Hidden Applications

The Evolution of the Swimmer’s Body

What You See and What You Don’t See

Doctors

The Teflon-style Protection of Giacomo Casanova

“I Am a Risk Taker”

I Am a Black Swan: The Anthropic Bias

The Cosmetic Because

Chapter 9: The Ludic Fallacy, or The Uncertainty of the Nerd

Fat Tony

Non-Brooklyn John

Lunch at Lake Como

The Uncertainty of the Nerd

Gambling with the Wrong Dice

Wrapping Up Part One

The Cosmetic Rises to the Surface

Distance from Primates

PART TWO: WE JUST CAN’T PREDICT

From Yogi Berra to Henri Poincaré

Chapter 10: The Scandal of Prediction

On the Vagueness of Catherine’s Lover Count