- The Black Swan (book)
infobox Book |
name = The Black Swan
title_orig =
translator =
image_caption = UK edition cover
author = Nassim Nicholas Taleb
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country =United States
language = English
series =
genre =epistemology ,philosophy of science
publisher =Random House (US)Allen Lane (UK)
release_date =April 17 ,2007
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Hardback)
pages = 400 pp (hardcover)
isbn = ISBN 978-1400063512 (US), 978-0713999952 (UK)
preceded_by =Fooled by Randomness
followed_by ="The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" is a book about
randomness anduncertainty by epistemologist Nassim Nicholas Taleb.Overview: Black swan theory
Taleb, bestselling author of "
Fooled by Randomness ", treatsuncertainty andrandomness as a single idea. SeeBlack swan theory for Taleb's definition of a Black swan.ales
"The Black Swan" had print runs for the UK and US markets totalling 370,000 copies by
April 2008 .cite news
last = Baker-Said
first = Stephanie
title = Taleb Outsells Greenspan as Black Swan Gives Worst Turbulence
publisher = Bloomberg
date =March 27, 2008
url = http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aHfkhe8.C._8&refer=home
accessdate = 2008-04-21] It also spent 17 weeks on theNew York Times Bestseller list and was translated into 27 languages. The impressive sales of Taleb's first two books garnered an advance of $4 million dollars for a follow-up, tentatively titled "Tinkering"."Summary
Nassim Nicholas Taleb refers to the book variously as an essay or a narrative with one single idea: "our blindness with respect to randomness, particularly large deviations." [Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" 2007. New York: Random House. pxix.] It is Taleb's questioning of why this occurs and his explanations of it that drive the book forward.
The book's layout follows "a simple logic" [Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" 2007. New York: Random House. PROLOGUE pxxviii.] moving from literary subjects in the beginning to scientific and mathematical subjects in the later portions. Part 1 and the beginning of Part 2 delve into
Psychology . Taleb addresses science and business in the latter half of Part 2 and Part 3. Part 4 contains advice on how to approach the world in the face of uncertainty and still enjoy life.Taleb himself, acknowledges a contradiction in the book. He uses an exact metaphor, Black Swan Idea to argue against the "unknown, the abstract, and imprecise uncertain--white ravens, pink elephants, or evaporating denizens of a remote planet orbiting Tau Ceti."
"There is a contradiction; this book is a story, and I prefer to use stories and vignettes to illustrate our gullibility about stories and our preference for the dangerous compression of narratives."
"You need a story to displace a story. Metaphors and stories are far more potent (alas) than ideas; they are also easier to remember and more fun to read." [Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" 2007. New York: Random House. PROLOGUE pxxvii.]
Part 1 Umberto Eco's antilibrary, or how we seek validation
In the first chapter, the
black swan theory is firstdiscussed in relation to Taleb's coming of age in theLevant . The author then elucidates his approach tohistorical analysis. He describes history as opaque, essentiallya black box of cause and effect. You see events go in and eventsgo out, but you have no way of determining which ones producedwhat effect. Taleb argues this is due to "The Triplet ofOpacity" [Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. "The Black Swan: TheImpact of the Highly Improbable" 2007. New York: Random House.PROLOGUE p8.]In the second chapter, Taleb tells the story of author YevgeniaNikolayevna Krasnova and her book "A Story of Recursion". Shepublished her book on the web and was discovered by a smallpublishing company; they published her work unedited and thebook became an international bestseller. The small publishingfirm became a big corporation, and Yevgenia became famous.This incident is a Black Swan. Talebseems to be using "recursion" as a hint that he is predictingthe story of his own book The Black Swan--Yevgenia's rejectionof fiction and nonfiction as categories is eerily reminiscent ofTaleb's idea, and her character seems autobiographical as Talebmay be poking fun at his own intolerant temperament.
In the third chapter, Taleb introduces the concepts of"Extremistan" and "Mediocristan". He uses them as guides todefine how predictable the environment you're studying is."Mediocritstan" environments can safely use Gaussian distribution. In "Extremistan" environments a Gaussian distribution is used at your peril.
Chapter 4 brings together the topics discussed earlier in thenarrative of a turkey. Taleb uses it to illustrate thephilosophical problem of induction andhow past performance is no indicator of future performance. Hethen takes the reader into the history of
Skepticism .In Chapter 9 Taleb outlines the multiple topics he haspreviously described and connects them as a single basic idea.
Arguments
The term black swan comes from the ancient Western conception that all swans were white. Thus, the Black Swan is an oft cited reference in philosophical discussions of the improbable. Aristotle's Prior Analytics is most likely the original reference that makes use of example syllogisms involving the predicates "white", "black" and "swan." More specifically Aristotle uses the White Swan as an example of necessary relations and the Black Swan as improbable. This example may be used to demonstrate either deductive or inductive reasoning. However, neither form of reasoning is infallible since in inductive reasoning premises of an argument may support a conclusion but does not ensure it and similarly in deductive reasoning an argument is dependent on the truth of its premises. That is, a false premise can possibly lead to a false result, and inconclusive premises will also yield an inconclusive conclusion. John Stuart Mill first used the black swan narrative to discuss falsification.
Ironically the 17th Century discovery of black swans in Australia metamorphosed the term to connote an exception to the rule and the very existence of the improbable. Thus, the limits of the argument behind "all swans are white" is exposed - it is merely based on the limits of experience (e.g that every swan I have seen, heard, or read about is white). Hume's attack against induction and causation is primarily based on the limits of experience and so too the limitations of scientific knowledge.
Higher frequency
Rare and improbable events do occur much more than we dare to think. Our thinking is usually limited in scope and we make assumptions based on what we see, know, and assume. Reality, however, is much more complicated and unpredictable than we think.
Also, assumptions relevant to average situations are less relevant to irregular situations, especially when the "rules of the game" themselves do change.The huge effect
Extreme events do happen and have a big effect. Examples abound, including September 11th. The Internet with its various effects was scarcely anticipated, and it is a development that has had a significant effect. The effects of extreme events are even higher due to the fact that they are unexpected.
Limited human knowledge
Why do people tend to neglect rare events? Partly because humans underestimate their ignorance in most situations—the effect of unexpected events is far more significant than people often imagine. Taleb argues that the proposition "we know" is in many cases an illusion—the human mind tends to think it knows, but it does not always have a solid basis for this delusion of "I know". This notion that we do not know is very old, dated as far back at least as
Socrates . Some feltWho|date=July 2007 that the advancement ofscience has rendered the world well-known; Taleb argues that while science added knowledge, the world did not turn into a fictitious world where everything is known. Socrates' dictum "the only thing I know is that I do not know" is as true as ever, Taleb concludes. Taleb characterizes the trait, in part, as theLudic fallacy .Not all experts deserve the title
Taleb also questions the authority of
expert s. The "truth" behind science is limited to certain areas and methods, and in many areas having an academic degree and presenting oneself as a scientist is irrelevant. Indeed, authority can stifle empirical experience which, so many times, has proven to have a sounder base for accuracy.The narrative fallacy
Another issue is the "narrative fallacy" which refers to our tendency to construct stories around facts, which in
love for example may serve a purpose, but when someone begins to believe the stories and accommodate facts into the stories, they are likely to err.Sardonic humor
Taleb has a chapter entitled "Yevgenia's Black Swan." In it, he discusses a neuroscientist with an interest in philosophy, named Yevgenia Nikolayevna Krasnova.Citation
last = Taleb
first = Nassim Nicholas
title = The Black Swan: The Impact of the highly improbable
pages = 23-25
year = 2007 ]
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