THE BLACK SWAN: SECOND EDITION: THE IMPACT OF THE HIGHLY IMPROBABLE: WITH A NEW SECTION: "ON ROBUSTNESS AND FRAGILITY" (INCERTO) by Taleb, Nassim Nicholas - 2010

Random House Trade Paperback, 2010. Paperback. Very Good. A copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. The Black Swan is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb's landmark Inc erto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, h uman error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don't understand. The o ther books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, Antifragile, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes. A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characterist ics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predi ctable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everythin g about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives. Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they oc cur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired t o learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentra te on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into cons ideration what we don't know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate o pportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categ orize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the "impossib le." For years, Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large event.