I’d give this book two stars. The book has some interesting insights, but it is unnecessarily long with a lot of anecdotes, name-dropping and less-known examples. Basically, the idea could have been wrapped up in 20-50 pages. Plus, the flow could have been much easier to follow.
In short, Black Swan talks about the great impact of the outliers, unpredictable events that happen in our life. For instance, if a person somehow were involved in a car accident through no fault of his or her own, the person’s life would be turned upside down. As Black Swans are not predictable, the author urged us not to use the past to predict the future. Yet, it seems that we are prone to doing exactly that, using data from the past to predict the future. I believed he claimed that we humans were victims of asymmetry in understanding random events. He also claimed that there were no experts in a lot of fields.
The thesis of the book seems obvious, but we don’t always have it in mind. As human beings, we love to predict the future and know what is going to happen years from now. I am always astonished by the popularity of fortune-telling. It amazes me how those fortune tellers could see the future. It simply seems impossible to me. Even if they could, why would they agree to earn modest income from that profession? Wouldn’t it be much more lucrative to gamble or pick stocks?
Regarding business, who could have predicted in 2000 that Yahoo would be what it is today? Or Nokia, one of the biggest brands in the world in 2005, would be a shell of its former self today? Or Kodak and more recently Facebook? I agree with him that life is too uncertain to predict. We are terrible at it, yet that’s what we keep doing.
Also, I agree with him that being alive is already extraordinary. I always feel lucky enough to be born without any disabilities or sickness. There is no telling what could happen to a child in a mother’s womb. One DNA misplaced could mean a lot of consequences for the child. In an infinite universe, we are living on a speck of dust millions of years old that has gone through a lot of revolutions and unpredictable events. If we are alive, we are already Black Swans.
Minh Quang Duong 