I always tell my students that life is about risk. How we assess it, how we approach it, how we make decisions based upon it. The Black Swan is about risk. The Black Swan represents some of the greatest risk because it is difficult to guard against. The Black Swan is the stock market crash of 1987, the automobile, the airplane, the internet, the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
Our human frailties, our confirmation bias, our inclination towards the narrative, Taleb reminds us time and again, are what prevent us from predicting future risk with barely any degree of accuracy. And herein lies the problem. These things occur. Period. Pretending that these inconvenient outliers don't exist because they don't fit into our nifty mathematical models (Bell Curves) is delusional to say the least. Basing individual's retirements, pensions and maybe someday social security on models that don't match reality is bordering on fraud.
In conclusion, this is a must read book. However, it was too long with too much devoted to the narrative and not enough to the technical ways of applying fractals to stock markets. The thought experiments were excellent as were the way he would use reality to bash the current social scientists over the head with empiricism. It made me feel warm inside. Reality has a way of smashing bad science into place like the vulcanologists who died in Peru after being warned by a lesser about the impending disaster.
This book had lots of great quotes, however, it left the best one I have ever heard on the subject. It is by Richard Feynman: for any invention, all the marketing and propaganda doesn't matter, because nature cannot be fooled.
Taleb's Site http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/
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