Seen a black swan recently?
Actually, you are living through one – the global financial crisis that has stunned bankers and traders around the world. Actually you are one – in evolutionary terms, your chances of being here are “a chance occurrence of monstrous proportions”.
The concept and the quote come from Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his bestselling book “The Black Swan: The Impact Of The Highly Improbable”. You can read my review of the book here.
As you will see, I found the book to be over-hyped and badly written. If you want better books on new ways of thinking, try “Freakonomics” [my review here] or “Blink” [my review here] or “Predictably Irrational” [my review here].
February 24th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Concur with your view (so far). I’m not convinced I’ve learnt all that much more after the first couple of chapters, and his style is really starting to grate. I’m not sure I’d particularly like the man if I ever met him, at least based on how he portrays himself and his view of others.