Reader Alex passed along his recent The Black Swan book review.<\/p>\n
\nWhy Do You Recommend This Book?<\/strong><\/h1>\n
The Black Swan made me realize that living a carefully planned out life is\u00a0a mistake. I remember after I first read the book at the now-closed Borders on Michigan Ave in Chicago while I was still in law school.\u00a0Afterwards, I walked around outside dazed and confused, and feeling like I\u2019d been living my life all wrong.<\/p>\n
What was in the book?<\/p>\n
A\u00a0lot of information, actually, but everything sort of\u00a0revolves around just a few core principles that stick with me to this day:<\/p>\n
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- The events with the greatest impact in your life (Black Swans) are unexpected;<\/li>\n
- They are unexpected because of a variety of cognitive biases; and<\/li>\n
- No matter how hard we\u00a0try, we will fail to predict these consequential events.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Think back to the biggest events in the U.S. of the past few decades. We\u2019re talking about things like the Internet becoming popular, the terrorist attacks on\u00a09\/11, or the Global Financial Crisis. None of these things were expected or predicted. If you read books\/articles these days, they all\u00a0describe a linear history where these things were expected to happen. There\u2019s a ton of hindsight bias<\/a> in written history, and Taleb gives us\u00a0more specific details as to why.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n