The Black Swan
Key Principles, Insights and Actionable Exercises
What is a black swan, you ask? This term is used to discuss the highly significant, yet unpredictable events that make predictions and everyday explanations useless. You see, one of the problems with our human brain is not overthinking, but thinking too well, seeing patterns that aren’t there and jumping to impossible conclusions.
In his book, The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb considers experts who think they can predict the future and explain the past (such as Wall Street bankers, CEOs, M.B.A.s, investment gurus, hedge fund managers, traders, and Nobel Prize winning economists)to be rotten and misguided because they fail to appreciate “black swans.”
The book will sometimes jolt the reader due to the unorthodox views expressed by the author, but it makes for a thought-provoking and sometimes overwhelming read that is both controversial and unforgettable, making you think of chance and randomness in a whole new light. It teaches you why black swans should be appreciated more, why we constantly see misleading patterns in data, and how we can embrace randomness and thereby come to terms with those black swans.