i read the black swan recently and found it fascinating,here is what i wrote about it on a message board me and my friends post on:
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ok,i'm going to sound evangelical when i talk about this book but fuck it,its worth it.
i just finished reading the black swan by nassim nicholas taleb,best known for writing the finance book fooled by randomness. this book explores similar ideas,and is somewhere in the middleground between maths,philosophy,sociology,politics,and various other disciplines.
the book's central idea is roughly to do with how large a role randomness plays in everything,how little people understand this randomness,and how biases in how we understand things affect all this.its difficult to describe exactly what it deals with,and descriptions of it i have read in reviews make it sounds more trite and gimmicky than it actually is.
the buzzword that the book is built around is the idea of the black swan,an extremely unlikely,impossible to predict event with huge consequences.all the stuff about it is fascinating,but any attempt to describe it without all the other stuff wouldn't really do it justice,and i found a lot of the tangents he goes off on that dance around the main idea to be as interesting as the idea itself.
i think most people we know would find some interesting stuff in the book,and while i was reading it i was constantly reminded of conversations and arguements that i've been involved in over the years that would have been infinitely more interesting if everyone involved had read the book.at times there were sections i wish i could have pointed to in the past that described ideas i was trying to get across,other sections would have humbled me in past debates had whoever i was arguing with been able to point to them.
i'd list the people who would enjoy this book but i'd be sure to leave some of them out,suffice to say if you have ever been deeply involved in a lenghty somewhat abstract conversation that could broadly be described as philosophical,scientific,political,sociological,or any number of variations on the above i think you would love this book. nearly every page has something on it that is worth thinking about,some of it is like reading something you've always vaguely thought described perfectly,other parts reveal huge gaps in our understanding of the world that we (or at least i) would have been unaware of.
the book presumes no real prior knowledge of any of the subjects it deals with,so don't be put off by the seriousness of the subject matter.there were some maths bits that i couldn't understand (although these were prececed by the author's advice that "nontechnical" readers could safely skip them,so i didnt feel like i was missing out on too much) and it certainly made me wish i had a better grounding in numerous intellectual disciplines,but on the whole it is remarkably readable for a book which draws on so many disparate and comlicated areas.
some people have criticised this book for the tone it adopts-certainly the author is somewhat full of himself,but for the most part i felt like i was watching a virtuoso performance by an accomplished thinker,and if this sometimes veers towards a certain intellectual arrogance then so be it,i feel like he earned it,and in general he seems like a good natured and amiable enough chap with just enough charm to get away with what he is saying and how he is saying it.
some of the central conceits of the book feel a bit buzz-wordy and a little lame while you are reading them,but looking back i think they do a very good job of making the often extremely complicated ideas he deals with accessible to the lay reader such as myself,so i think they are fair enough even if they are a little cringe inducing every so often.
i realise that i'm nailing my flag fairly emphatically to the mast of this being a great book,which may be a little naive considering that i amn't fully equipped to provide a comprehensive critique of its ideas,and i could certainly imagine someone who is more involved in some of the areas it deals with finding some flaws in it,but i would be amazed if anyone could read this book without learning something,the areas it covers are so broad that it cannot but be thought provoking no matter who is reading it."
