Customer Reviews: Read 32 more reviews...
 The Black Swan September 28, 2008
A one sentence summary of The Black Swan would be 'The future is unwritten, at least in Bell Curves'. Taleb ponders the random events that arrive unseen and yet cause a huge impact on the world around us for example:
Positive black swans: penicillin, cellular phone, micro-processor, worldwide web, Macintosh, the iPod
Negative black swans: Altamont,Watergate, the 1973 oil crisis, July 7 public transport bombings
The book has received the most publicity around the role that it plays debunking many of the 'scientific' theorems that run the financial markets. He exposes the limitations of scientific models employed by bankers and demonstrated how analysts and journalists retrofit event explanations around events that they don't really understand.
However, more important from my perspective as someone interested in technology (in its widest sense) is Taleb's ideas on positive black swans.
Developments that make the most impact creep on us over time. I wouldn't have thought when I was in school at the launch of UK mobile phone networks Vodafone and Cellnet that just about everyone in the UK would have their own mobile telephone. Yet now, it feels so strange to watch films like Bullit, where a large amount of the plot feels odd because Steve McQueen isn't packing a mobile phone.
Taleb writes in an engaging manner explaining that in order to be better prepared for these unforseen events, we need to think outside the box and learn to be open enough to recognise and embrace the positive black swans before they are too mainstream.
 Entertaining, thought-provoking, over-long August 29, 2008
The central issue, which is sound, is reiterated almost to the point of boredom. Which is a shame because the style is entertaining and the critique of modern portfolio theory is pretty devastating. He could have said it in half the number of words and added more in the way of constructive alternative strategies or at least expanded on the ideas he briefly advanced. Don't buy the hardback: buy the paperback and spend the rest on something else. Well worth reading though.
 I'll keep this short... April 9, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I am shocked by the number of middling to low reviews this book is getting, so I felt compelled to add my five stars - my first ever Amazon review. While I appreciate the criticisms w.r.t. the peculiar writing style and self-indulgence, this book is superb because of the ideas it puts forth. I have to think anyone who does not like it, simply does not "get it" for whatever reason.
Disliking the book or not understanding it may not be an issue of intelligence, but one of careful reading (or the lack thereof). However, as I suspect is more likely, that to accept the main points of the book would force some people to look negatively back at years and years of their own lives, beliefs and behaviors, which is something most humans simply are not willing to do...and I offer that more as an observation than as a criticism.
Too clever by 75.987456 per cent March 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a very amusing provocation by perhaps the most subversive philosopher economist since C Northcote Parkinson. He makes a case that is hard to refute that chance and luck play a much bigger role than our narratives might suggest, and that consequent to this/subsequent to it there are always going to be anomolous events that are more or less completely unforseen, which are going to result in money blowing up, amongst other things. At a time of turbulance in global markets, this is an especially entertaining read that lays out a devastating case against conventional wisdom and above all the Bell Curve, while be laugh-out-load funny at the same time. It sets out to humble some undeserving recipients of the Nobel Prize for economics, although it can be argued that this is akin to shooting ducks in a cage.
Some key insights. Half the length and a quarter of the ego and it's a 5. March 2, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is the archetypal curate's egg tome. A few of the concepts took my breath away. His erudition is unquestionable. No doubt, this man is smarter than me. I thought it worth struggling through.
What, struggle you say? The man would seem to have an enormous ego, enjoys self-promotion (and taking cheap shots at his antagonists). The shame is that it comes through, subtly at first, building and then, with the last chapter, ending in almost a shriek of self-righteousness.
He makes great points only to shoot himself in the foot. An example, yes, the world does over-use the normal curve. And, yes, it does so as, if you can accept "normality" there are a host of mathematical tools. And many just use normal as if it were, well, normal. Contrary to Taleb's assertion that we all use it blindly the statisticians I know all worry about their selection of models and distributions - they don't enter into analysis blindly.
I'm glad I read it. I'm off to hear him lecture. I'll probably buy another book of his. But he needs a more ruthless editor to say, "Nassim, enough, chop those pages."
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