The Black Swan

Mr. Taleb has a problem. He is not fond of randomness. Specifically, he is not fond of catastrophic, unexpected randomness. Likely, this has much to do with the destruction of his own home in Lebanon. These events that are unecpected he calls a Black Swan.

This read is a little dated in the sense that it was written in 2006. Much of the science present reflects the thinking of the period. However, Mr. Taleb succeeds in his quest to be a kind of modern day Socrates basically resisting the Gaussian tyranny and insisting on some level we know nothing. He does exceedingly well at this.

On the other hand, he seems to completely overlook those who can generate a black swan almost single-handedly. The Ultra-Rich banking people who have fueled much of Mr. Taleb's career are likely not affected by the black swans of the world the way the rest of humanity is. Why? Because a conspiracy among a few is not a black swan except to those who are not "in on it". By his own admission, Mr. Taleb's father preferred the company of highly educated Jesuit Priests. In a later chapter, he mentions the Da Vinci code as a book example. He also uses Nero as the name of an example character, as well as mobsters. These things make one wonder what or who Mr. Taleb is ultimately serving.

One thing is for sure, by his own admission he "Hates black swans" and yet, his entire career has been defined by them.

My rating reflects less a judgment on the quality of the writing, and more of a judgment on the content. Simply put, there is much in this book I do not agree with. Yet, where I do agree, I am in strong agreement. If I agreed with the whole thing, would I have given the review five stars? Perhaps. Somehow, in this case, it feels like my disagreements where they exist are strong enough to warrant the docking of one star. The contents is well worth reading simply to make one "think through" what they think they know, especially if they have ever had statistics. Just know beforehand that I think at the very least Mr. Taleb has some blindness. At the worst, he is providing a framework to protect his own interests.

I agree almost entirely with large portions of Taleb's work here, but I've got some broad problems with his presentation of the material. I'm sure I'll come back several times over the coming weeks to rewrite portions of this review as it won't come out quite right the first time, so please bear this in mind.

My biggest critique of the work is the poor writing style and layout of his overarching arguments. It could have stood to have a stronger editor (or any editor at all??), though my supposition is that his prior work's success has allowed him the unfortunate position to either eschew an editor or dismiss any advise dispensed by one. As a result, he writes a bit too cryptically and leaves out far too much for the audience he's trying to reach. Most won't have read as widely or as deeply as he has and he could stand to include a lot more background for the interested reader.

He has a very non-linear style of writing and is constantly referring either forward or backward within the work to other sections rather than laying out his present argument in the moment. This makes for spotty reading and comprehension for the majority of readers who are not prone to do all the back-and-forth required to get his full arguments. Similarly the layout of the footnotes and the endnotes doesn't do as much as they might for the lay reader and couldn't be said to be good even for the academic community.

Fortunately he provides a semblance of a glossary, but his definitions read like those of a 17th century dictionary rather than the clear and concise definitions he might have provided otherwise. This does little to help clarify his points.

Given the diversity of his background, he leaves something to be desired in his overall viewpoint and splits a happy middle ground between that of a philosopher and that of a mathematician. I'm interested to read a more mathematical driven version of his thinking, but nothing in his presentation here gives me much hope that his mathematical exposition will live up what a pure mathematician would expect from a text. Naturally, here in writing for a more broad public, he completely leaves out any real mathematics in favor for higher book sales. He's left then primarily with a more philosophic viewpoint which is reasonably established and laid out, but which still suffers from a lack of clarity even for someone well-versed in the field and who agrees with much of (or even all of) what he's saying.

I was much more impressed with the material that was added afterwards in the second edition (which I read). It was far more logically presented and written, I only wish the original part had been so well thought out and laid out.

I'm glad his work is popular enough that despite his ability to present his ideas and thoughts that they still manage to sell as many copies and reach as broad an audience as they do. We certainly need more of his viewpoint in the world, I just wish that he was a far better communicator of his ideas to help them stick in the minds of others better.

He does a reasonably good job of showing where he's coming from, though I find myself wondering if he's delved into the broader writings of researchers in the complexity theory community. I know he's spoken of those in information theory subsequent to this work, but suspect that his reading into information theory and complexity theory has come after he's written this work. I suspect that he'll go further and farther in his theories once he has.

I find myself thinking of Taleb as a "Big Historian", but one who doesn't realize that the field exists yet. Those who are aware of it will find his writing and analysis very intriguing.

Given his presentation, I find myself most pleased with is analogies of economics, stability, and conceptualization of robustness with those of evolutionary theory (or "mother nature" as he tends to term things.) Most evolutionary theorists will have his reading of economics and probability in their bones already. I wish that more business people and government officials took these viewpoints more readily.

In all, I'd recommend this book and some of his other works to nearly everyone, but again, I wish for better clarity and easier adoption of his viewpoint that the book was better laid out and written in its overarching arguments. I fear that far too many will have purchased it and either not ended up reading it or not fully understood the depth of his arguments properly as a result.

For substance and importance, I'd rate it 5 stars, but for style and clarity I'd have to punish it with a possibly over-generous 2.5 stars out of 5. Alternately, as a thinker he gets full marks, but leaves much to be desired as a communicator of his thought.

Taleb's thesis is that by constructing stories when writing history, we ascribe a causality that simply isn't justified by events. Random events happen. After the fact, historians provide post-hoc reasons for those random events, making them seem as though they could have been predicted at the time. Taleb argues that this habit badly distorts our view of reality, making us blind to the probability - and more importantly, the impact - of random events.

Taleb is simultaneously thought-provoking and infuriatingly smug. He prides himself on his non-academic background, yet consistently appeals to the same classical and enlightenment authorities (well, apart from Fat Tony) as academics do.

What sets this book apart is the author's style, tone and approach. He doesn't construct his arguments case by case - it's more of a dialectic (which is a way to discuss processes and complex systems in flux) with diversions along the way into morality tales, Taleb's personal story of growing up in the Levant (anecdote is not evidence, Nassim) and frankly boastful lists of the authors he's read whom he feels bolster his case. There are contradictions, blind alleys, clever insights and funny asides. Just when you think he's about to get to the kernel of his argument and provide some blinding insight, he's off on some new tangent, laughing at you for not predicting the unexpected swerve.

I found myself gritting my teeth at Taleb's undergraduate arrogance in some passages and cheering him on in others, as he exposes (for example) the field of economics for the charlatanry it really is.

I'm not sure if I like this book - the author doesn't build as strong a case or as tightly-argued a case as he could have. I'm not sure if I like Taleb - his arrogance, combined with his transparent lack of confidence in his non-academic background really grates. Taleb's no anti-intellectual, but his appeals to authority - and simultaneous iconoclasm towards many of those same authorities - undermine his case.

Taleb's currently working on an idea he callls 'antifragility'. (What's the opposite of fragility? Not robustness, but antifragility, a characteristic which allows an entity to benefit from knocks and bumps - think of evolution.) He's making early drafts available to his fans (find him on Facebook) and undoubtedly he's on to something worthwhile. Reading an early draft is very enlightening - the inconsistencies and contradictions in his argument are plain to see. I expect he's going to work the same idea into a book-length treatise and give it the same rambling, self-indulgent treatment that unpredictability gets in the Black Swan. I'm not sure I'll have the stomach for it.