Customer Reviews:
 The Black Swan November 23, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
An excellent read during this time of troubled economics. A challenge to those who rely completely on statistical significance in all aspects of life. Thought provoking.
 Intriguing and easy to read November 23, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
Enjoyed Black Swan. It was an easy read and addressed some interesting high concepts around probability theory. The math toward the end of the book likely sent a few things over my head, but I didn't feel anything was purposefully pedantic. As for the main premise, I am not quite sure that today is more extremistan than yesterday - notwithstanding current dysfunction in the capital markets. I do think our expectations for normalcy have been heightened given our current propensity for risk (or lack thereof). So stuff feels much more extreme.
 A magnificent philosophy ruined by a premature compilation November 23, 2008
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
First of all, I must say I agree with most of Taleb's philosophy. The book shows the deep understanding of the human epistemology and the overlapping fields, and a certainly proper way to see the uncertain. However, everything is over at this point. His philosophical thoughts could be condensed in a fraction of the book, and Taleb could spare us a lot of digressions, pointless cultural references and dull stories. In addition, the writing style is hard to follow, somewhat boring and bombastic, and not necessarily cultured, and it displays a (maybe exaggeratedly) notorious cockiness. Mandelbrot's popular works (being him one of Taleb's heroes) state many of these ideas, proving other people wrong (or going against them), without being so insulting.
The impression I had, while and after reading the book, is that Taleb's intention (or desire), maybe hidden and unconscious, was aimed at writing a compendium of his thoughts, much like the work of all these philosophers he tells us about through the book (Popper, Hayek, Huet, Montaigne...), capitalizing on his previous best-seller and his reputation as a leading quant-finance professional. But he fails, giving too many distant stories and a lack of structure that does not match the depth of his philosophy. The book ends up being a narration, precisely one of the things the author warns us against (a fact already noted in the preface).
In conclusion, a badly conveyed but great philosophy.
Incoherent and slightly mad - but interesting November 20, 2008
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
Taleb wants to tell us about 'Black Swans' - highly improbable events that have a disproportionate impact - and the subject couldn't be more timely, in light of the global financial crisis, and especially in view of his (2006) comments on the precarious state of Fannie Mae. He makes the point that much statistical theory (and certainly economic modeling) assumes normally-distributed data, whereas the real world ("Extremistan" in his parlance) contains significant outlier events that can create havoc with models - and, as we have seen, with shareholder value.
Another bonus is that he is widely-read, widely-traveled, and eclectic in his sources. So he should be worth listening to. Unfortunately, he spends most of the book telling us about himself, and in particular how only he and a select few academics (Benoit Mandelbrot comes in for particular praise) really 'get it' as far as probability is concerned. He is a self-described 'erudite' whose exotic background (Lebanese Greek Orthodox, with several languages) gives him special insight that more pedestrian practitioners lack. Taleb spends much of the book reiterating how fraudulent, foolish or ignorant most economists, mathematicians and philosophers are; and how 'NNT' - as he prefers to call himself - has, through his empirical work as an options trader and his wide reading, achieved insights that the Nobel laureates have missed. (Nobel laureates are especially scorned.)
Apart from the self-aggrandizing and repetitive nature of his prose, the book's main failings are that Taleb tries but does not succeed in making the case that stock-market returns are fractal in nature (sorry, Dr Mandelbrot - this was discredited some time ago), and he offers virtually no useful advice on the central problem he raises. That is, given that Black Swans are so far outside our normal experience that they cannot be readily modeled or predicted, how should be prepare ourselves for the worst (or the best)? Taleb's answer: think outside the box, pursue potentially 'good' Swans, and hedge against bad ones. Oh, and 'don't be a sucker'.
I was - I paid money for his book.
The Pompous Bass by Narcissism Taleb November 19, 2008
This book reads like something created by the bad professor you had that never gives anybody A's, ever. And why not? Because, at least according to him, nobody is as smart as he is. Nobody. That's because nobody 'is' him. And he is the only smart person in the entire world. He is the Black Swan, smarter than anybody else by a quantum leap, according to Himself. How can he prove that he is so smart? He doesn't prove it, he just calls everybody else a moron instead. Why is he so smart? Well, he doesn't actually say, but if you cannot comprehend that he is by far and away the smartest person who ever lived, bar none, you must be a moron. And there you have it. The Black Swan in a nutshell.
So is he really that smart? Like many narcissists, he seems capable of convincing some people so. He did have one marginally clever thought, and here it is: don't throw out the outlier. To elaborate, outliers have curious and unique statistical behaviors and can be quite socially influential; outlier incidents can be predicted in retrospect, but never anticipated; and outlier events probably occur more frequently now than they every have, due to the influence of new media. Yeah, so what.
Like a classic narcissist (self-important to the point of indolence), he does not analyse his hypothesis in any way that would involve actual work (experimentation), at least none that he mentions. He may briefly claim that (I'm paraphrasing) "such analyses are impossible, you moron." He says his one good thought, says it again, quotes Hume, talks about himself and how great he is and how his people are downtrodden, and tosses out numerous extremely self-aggrandizing aspersions about philosophers and the people who study them. My favorite snotty comment was something like: as opposed to people who quote other philosophers, a few people who quote Hume have actually bothered to read Hume.
Probably a good half of the book is random narcissistic drivel, forty percent snide comments and ten percent the Black Swan idea, over and over again, with little new information presented.
What this guy needed was a good ghost writer, but I can't imagine sitting in a room with this guy for more than 10 minutes and not wanting to rip his throat out. I'm guessing all prospective ghost writers quit after being called morons and/or oppressors a few thousand times in a matter of hours.
Read a synopsis of the book for the one marginally interesting idea the guy ever had in his life if you want to, but I suggest you don't bother, because even his one idea is no big whoop-te-do. That is, don't bother to read this book unless you're trying to come up with character ideas for a really odious, pompous bad guy. In that case, this book is a goldmine.
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