Black Swan: The Impact Of The Highly Improbable

This book changed my life forever. Its an essential read for anyone interested in serious reading and not in the Chetan Bhagats of the world.

After reading "Fooled by Randomness" by Taleb, there is no mistaking that this book was intended as a haphazard rehash of his previous work. It's like a bad movie sequel, like Speed 2 or Basic Instinct 2, which were intended to fool the audience so that the studio can make a quick buck. This book is worse than those movies in many ways.

What made "Fooled by Randomness" a worthwhile read is Taleb's meaningful dissection of factors governing chance, luck and success in financial markets and life. It implored people not to confuse luck with success. It was thought provoking and un-superfluous writing which got me interested in this book: Black Swan.

However, this book is as pretentious as can be. Taleb's pathetic need for ego-trip can be seen on almost every page, and in every paragraph of this book; all of which boils down to praising his own "sheer brilliance" and his "know-it-all" mind.
Taleb's central contention is that existence of outliers invalidates a hypothesis. Any person who has an understanding of the (inductive and deductive) reasoning process would realize that his "brilliant" contention is flawed. He stresses that no one could have predicted the current Financial Crisis, which is absurd because knowledgeable people clearly saw it coming years before; his position that no one could foresee growth of internet, or the rise of Google, are equally ridiculous. Going by Taleb's "ingenious viewpoint" none of us should go to work because we can be run-over by a bus on the way; or eat outside, because we can be poisoned to death; or even get up from bed, because we can kill ourselves if we fall the wrong way. Taleb occasionally mentions the greats like Karl Popper and twists their broad philosophical underpinnings to further his own narrow (and many stupid) viewpoints.

"Absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence"; yes, we all know that because the idea is thousands of years old which can be traced back to the Greeks. Taleb, who has basically stolen the idea, pretentiously calls it the "Black Swan" to fool his readers. Even elementary statistics students know that many measures in nature do not follow Gaussian distribution, and all of us know that we cannot predict every single thing; we don't need Taleb using 300 pages full of extremely arrogant writing to repeat that.

The language is repetitive, the reading monotonous, and the style overbearing and obnoxious. The author comes off as a miserable, loser-child bullying in the playground. The only reason this gets 2 stars is because of references provided at the end which are quite useful even when partially incorrectly cross-referenced.

The whole world knows this book's awesomeness, needless to say anything about it.

Just that before ordering I was doubtful weather or not its 2nd edition, but it is the Second Edition. If you look closely at the book's image, at the top-right corner over the blue circular background its written that the book is 2nd edition.

This same book is also available from Random House (original publisher), see this:
www.flipkart.com/books/081297381x?affid=setu2kxyah

This is undoubtly one of the most influential books i have ever read. Exhilarating, enthralling and wonderfully intelligent this book will change the way you think.
The book in general blows you back and starts of by telling you how one exception to a largely accepted strong ideology belief or fact, a black swan, can shatter our whole belief system and takes you on an incredible journey.
Don't start it if you can't put it down. A DEFINITE MUST READ. Taleb is a genius. Period.

Great book. Brilliant observations.

If you're a thinker, this is the book for you. The observations and explanations of the perception of reality, what we think and why we think it, are something I've never come across.