Fascinating - Rated 
There are already a number of reviews that analyse this book in more detail than I could hope to do so myself, so I shall not write a long review. However, I personally found this book to be a fascinating insight into certain aspects of economics and even wider human behaviour. Whether the author is entirely right seems hardly the point -- there are clearly so many others and so many other systems which are fundamentally flawed. A fascinating read for anybody interested in economics in a wider sense and the human interpretation or quantification of risk.
Probably right - Rated 
The last book of the "enfant terrible" of finance is a must read, and I am saying that without having any links to amazon. However, while his tone works in getting his message across, it is not the best way of gaining friends among decision makers, which is a pity as many of his views are useful for managing risk.
I had the opportunity to see Nicholas Taleb in Barcelona a few years ago. Temporarily seduced by his eloquence and charm, and the fact that I got his book for free, I immediately read "Fooled by randomness". It was good to read someone that was not politically correct and that was as tough with the establishment views as the financial markets. "You are as good as your last trade", he said in his speech, which unfortunately is as true for traders as for society.
Despite recommending his book "The black swan", the first 180 pages are obsessed with explaining the difference between Mediocristan and Extremistan. For anyone that has read "Fooled by randomness", it becomes extremely repetitive, but keep going because it is Taleb. In addition, it is interesting to gain some background on the philosophers that would support his views, from Sextus Empiricus to Montaigne.
He finally gets to the point from chapter twelve onwards. There are some great sentences and good citations. I will start with the ones dedicated to financial regulators, valuable as the book was published early in 2007, so they are like a prediction of the regulators' inability to avoid the current crisis:
"regulators in the banking business are prone to a severe expert problem and they tend to condone reckless but (hidden) risk taking".
For those that hold anti capitalist views, his next prediction of the Lehman case will prove useful:
"The Achilles' heel of capitalism is that if you make corporations compete, it is sometimes the one that is most exposed to the negative Black Swan that will appear to be the most fit for survival".
It is all coherent with his statement "No one in particular is a good predictor of anything. Sorry".
Apart from the inability to plan, the book stresses, probably unwillingly, the importance of having a qualitative rather than a quantitative view of risk management. This view is perfectly expressed in his strong statement "people that worry for pennies instead of dollars can be dangerous to society."
As for modeling, he pays his tribute to BenoƮt Mandelbrot and fractal theory.
For other views on risk management and the current financial crisis, check my blog at []
Right on the money! - Rated
Upon watching dozens of newcasts on the recent financial meltdown, I was just impressed at the amount of so called "experts" getting it ridiculously wrong a few weeks later. I then pursued relevant literature on the subject and Taleb is right on the money: widespread epistemic arrogance! Truly enjoyable book!
The only less positive point that doesn't merit 5 star is some disorganization in the flow of ideas. I fell a smaller more incisive prose could have transmitted the thesis faster and better.
I also found the sometimes aggressive rhetoric against the "experts" gives the prose some color!. Nobody should take it personally but instead look at it with some sense of humor.
Grey Swans and reality - Rated
Great Book - really enjoyed it but did have moment when I got a little irritated, But that is a question of style and philosophical outlook. This does not detract one iota from the book and the ideas in it.
I especially liked the fact that s we know all our forecasting is less that 30% accurate and when it goes above this its pure fluke. This is because we as humans want certainty and want order from the chaos we perceive about us we are build to lose excess information and events and to be resilient we also forget the bad bits. This book tackles these with the idea of a Black Swan (who has ever seen one - this is peri-urban legend stuff). It actually explains what is happening today and while not predicting events warns about their possibility and the reality we so often refuse to face up.
We have all sorts of science and we created methods to make these reliable, note the word reliable, but not infallible as a result we have normalized everything and believe this to be true. There lies the problem. Natural sciences developed methods to show possible outcomes and accepted that the outcomes could be extreme and be normal. The argument goes, definitely worth reading and keeping in mind when looking at results of the scientific method used in so many disciplines today.
I have bought it and would recommend it as a interesting read.
Strangest reading experience of my life - Rated
I originally bought this book last year, I read about half of it but gave up in disgust at the general pretentiousness and repetition.
I picked it up again this year after the credit crunch had hit and it seemed to be a different book, funny with some insight into current market turmoil! Assuming the book hadn't changed while on my shelf, presumably I had.
The core idea is very simple, Gaussian (Normal/ bell curves) distributions are overused in finance and they critically underestimate the chances of high impact relatively rare events which are best modelled as Power laws (see the The Long Tail: How Endless Choice is Creating Unlimited Demand for another take). Taleb covers the slightly strange beat where finance/ statistics/ epistemology (Philosophy of Knowledge) meet. The only other writer I know that covers this ground is Soros. They both admire Karl Popper, although Taleb insists on calling him 'Herr Doctor Professor' Popper which just gets annoying after a while.
Worth a read if you can get past the writer's grating style, just read the last three chapters (the meat of the argument) if you really find him to irritating to bear. Perhaps you need to witness a Black Swan to really appreciate the argument.
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