The Black Swan
Also known as The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Nassim Nicholas Taleb's 2007 book on rare, unpredictable events with extreme impact, and our blindness to them.
At a glance
Key ideas
Blind to randomness, Mediocristan and Extremistan, The turkey …
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David Aldous, Giles Foden, The Guardian
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Daniel Kahneman and Antifragile
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Also on this page: Key facts · Links · Sources · Related pages
- Taleb argues that rare, unpredictable outliers have an outsized impact, and that people explain them away with simple stories after the fact.
- He calls this the Black Swan theory.
- He separates Mediocristan, where extremes barely move the average, from Extremistan, where one event can dominate.
- Rather than trying to predict Black Swans, he advises building robustness to bad ones and the ability to exploit good ones.
- He uses fiction and anecdotes from his own life to make the case.
Why it matters
- The Sunday Times called it one of the twelve most influential books since the Second World War; it made "black swan" a common term for a rare, high-impact event.
Key facts
- Author
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a former options trader1
- Published
- 2007, Random House1
- Series
- Part of the Incerto, his five-volume series on uncertainty1
- Bestseller
- 36 weeks on the New York Times list: 17 in hardcover, 19 in paperback1
- Translations
- Published in 32 languages1
Key ideas
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Blind to randomness1
Taleb's one idea: our blindness to randomness, especially large deviations.
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Mediocristan and Extremistan1
Height averages are safe from outliers; wealth is not, so Gaussian models fail there.
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The turkey1
Fed well every day until Thanksgiving, the turkey shows that past performance does not predict the future.
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Don't be the turkey1
A Black Swan depends on the observer; find where you are exposed and "turn the Black Swans white".
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Epistemic arrogance1
People think they know more than they do; avoid relying on large-scale predictions.
Reception
Connections
Links
Sources
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