The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Black Swan written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb deals with the impact of the highly improbable—the actual subtitle of the book—in the real world. The title comes from the fact that one single event is enough to prove a theory wrong; in this case the European theory that all swans were white previous to the discovery of Australia and black swans.

I really hated/loved the book. The mean reason for the first was the introduction of an example in the person of a writer—which I couldn't find in Google—that made me believe that Dr. Taleb was some kind of literary conman creating a fake narrative to advance his ideas. I felt betrayed. I like confidence games but I don't like being conned by an author while dealing with a serious topic. Good thing is that later, in a footnote, it is made clear that the author/example was mere fiction, a gedankenexperiment. Then, I came to love the book: It is an anecdotal narrative denouncing our weakness and inclination for anecdotal, causal narratives that blinds us from the skeptical, empirical analysis of events in economics, history, sociology and other human endeavors to understand our  non-ideal selves, societies and surroundings. I think I can construct another paradoxical phrase like the latter: In parts, t is a name dropping exposition denouncing name dropping expositions. 

I found many things to like from the manuscript—a flowing prose filled with real and imaginary examples, an ample reference and bibliographical section (almost one third of the electronic version)—and just one to dislike: I felt the first two parts became repetitive.

The ideas are sound, our actual knowledge does not allow us to simulate realistic scenarios to provide accurate predictions and, most probably, you and I will be long dead when, if, such an exercise becomes feasible—think about Assimov's psychohistory in Foundation *wink*.

Is there a way to predict the future when it comes to phenomena that belong to the so-called Extremistan (most of the modern real world)? No.

Then, what's the use of knowing that? Awareness, there are infinitely many things we don't know that could affect us, but one we can try to control: our actions and, thus, our exposure to those unknown.

It's a great book, try it. I even see it as a kind of philosophy of life. I am really thankful to my brother Andre for suggesting it to me. I think that I would not have picked it up by myself.