The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Description

A condensed guide to life from the bestselling author of The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Bed of Procrustes is an invaluable collection of aphorisms navigate the modern world Why are we so often unwilling to accept that life is unpredictable? In this brilliant book Nassim Nicholas Taleb distils his idiosyncratic wisdom to demolish our illusions, contrasting the classical values of courage, elegance and erudition against modern philistinism and phoniness. Only by accepting what we don't know, he shows, can we see the world as it really is. 'Happily provocative ... blistering ... his observations concern superiority, wealth, suckerdom, academia, modernity, technology and the all-purpose, ignorant "they" ... very quotable' - The New York Times

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a radical no-nonsense philosopher for our times. He has spent his life immersing himself in problems of luck, uncertainty, probability, and knowledge, and he has led three high-profile careers around his ideas, as a man of letters, as a businessman-trader, and as a university professor and researcher. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University's School of Engineering. He is the author of the 4-volume INCERTO (Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, and The Bed of Procrustes). Taleb refuses all awards and honours as they debase knowledge by turning it into competitive sports.

A fascinating study of how we are regularly taken for suckers by the unexpected * Guardian * Like the conversation of a raconteur ... hugely enjoyable - compelling * Financial Times * It has altered modern thinking * The Times * Confirms his status as a guru for every would-be Damien Hirst, George Soros and aspirant despot * Sunday Times * The Black Swan changed my view of how the world works -- Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow Great fun... brash, stubborn, entertaining, opinionated, curious, cajoling -- Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics The most prophetic voice of all * GQ *