Customer Reviews:
 How compare to author's "Fooled by Randomness"? January 3, 2009
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The author has also written "Fooled by Randomness". Both books deal with the same matter; how low risk/chance events can have a major impact more often that realised. The book earns five stars because it forces the reader to think about a very important issue.
Which of the author's books should you buy?
1. What a big font, very easy read? Then go for "Fooled by Randomness"
2. Want a small font, more intellectual read? The go for this book.
There is absolutely no need to read both. Just pick the one the fits your temperament.
Any critique? The book is focusing on just one matter and the author is pushing it a bit too one-sided. However, it doesn't matter if the book isn't balanced. The book gets you thinking. You should expose yourself to the ideas. Stylistically the book is not very good. However, this is not poetry so I would not put much emphasis on this point either.
Who should buy? All social scientists, all people investing in the stock market, and all people involved in planning about the future.
 Surprisingly personal diatribe January 3, 2009
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I just finished reading the Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
The book is about the disproportionate effect on our world of highly improbable events, and the difficulty of predicting those events. The name comes from David Hume's observation that many generations of Britons' only seeing white swans was not proof that there is no such thing as a black swan (which do, in fact, exist).
I found the book very disappointing. It started out with so much promise; I looked forward to reading all sorts of anecdotal stories of these so-called black swans, and about the disproportionate effect on our world.
Instead, what I got was a 300 page diatribe by one statistician against all the others in the world who disagree with him, punctuated by an occasional gratuitous insult of the French.
After enduring several hundred pages of personal stories about the author's quest to make his statistical theories known (which are not quite as controversial as he would make you believe, by the way), finally in Chapter 15 it seems that he will get to the meat of the matter. Unfortunately, even though the next three chapters were laden with graphs and figures, I encountered no such explanations. Or, if there were any, they were muddled at best.
Even the anecdotes were disappointing. I was excited to start reading about a great vindication of his - the collapse of LTCM in 1998 (which was run by several of his statistical nemeses) - expecting to find a wonderful explanation of what went wrong, and all the financial turmoil which resulted. Instead, he simply stated "it went bust." Duh.
I have no idea why this book has been so highly touted. Perhaps it is because it came on the heels of 9/11, and just before the credit turmoil which started in 2007. But it's not worth your time.
 Tantalising and frustrating. December 29, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
The major ideas in this book are without question very important but unfortunately,in my view, poorly elucidated.The arguments are presented in a rambling confused way with lots of superfluous material that serves to obfuscate rather than clarify. The author seems unable to make a point clearly and succinctly and then leave it alone. The interminable stories, name dropping and confusing exemplars make reading large sections of the book sheer drudgery. In addition by basically calling everyone who disagrees with him a moron he casts himself in a very poor light.I also suspect that English is not Mr Talebs native language and this explains his awkward somewhat stilted prose. At the end of the book I could not help but feel that an opportunity for a great book had been squandered for want of a good editor.
The Socrates of Wall Street December 28, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I urge any professional, executive, or manager to study Taleb. He reveals the flaws in how we and our peers think. He has a philosophical approach but has little in commmon with most academic philosophers. He draws from his experience in financial derivatives trading, but has little in common with most investment bank analysts or economists. Instead, like Socrates, Taleb shows how supposed "experts" systematically delude themselves and their audiences into believing they know much more than they really do.
 Extreme annoyance December 27, 2008
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
This is one of the most annoying books I have ever tried to read. Perhaps this is because I have a Ph.D. in economics and know something about the topics covered, but could also be because Taleb has a self-indulgent, self-referential, inchoate writing style that would drive any discerning reader crazy. His arguments are almost always tendentious, his expositions seriously flawed, his conclusions spurious. You will learn little or nothing from this book, and may find the experience of reading it highly annoying.
Let me add that I am sympathetic with the conclusions, I just find the writing poor and the exposition tendentious and tedious in a way that I call "bogus mystification," which involves frequent sloppy self-contradiction with the intention of sparking an interruption from the interlocutor which can then be interrupted by the speaker, a middle-Eastern conversational style that fares poorly on paper. Nowhere in this book are the principles explained clearly.
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