The black swan

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Black Swan (2010) offers insights into perceived randomness and the limitations we face in making predictions.

Summary

Even though we’re constantly making predictions about the future, we’re actually terrible at it. We put far too much confidence in our knowledge and underestimate our ignorance. Our over-reliance on methods that appeal to our intuition at the expense of accuracy, our basic inability to understand and define randomness, and even our biology all contribute to poor decision making, and sometimes to “Black Swans” — events thought to be impossible that redefine our understanding of the world.

 

Key insights

  • “Black Swans” are events thought to lie outside the realm of possibility, and yet happen anyway.

  • Black Swan events can have earth-shattering consequences for those who are blind to them.

  • We are very easily fooled by even the most basic of logical fallacies.

  • The way that our brains categorize information makes accurate predictions extremely difficult.

  • We don’t easily distinguish between scalable and non-scalable information.

  • We are far too confident in what we believe we know.

  • Taking an inventory of what you don’t know will help you to assess risks better.

  • Having a good understanding of our limitations as human beings can help us to make better choices.


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