The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Nassim Nicholas Taleb - The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

The Black Swan, by Taleb, because at the time it was particularly relevant to my work and since then has also impacted my decision making process more generally. The Re-enchantment of Art, by Suzi Gablik. I hated it when I first read it but then after reading it a second time realized she was right about a lot of things.

The first time I read Talebs Black Swan was pretty mind bending. It's a intriguing mix of philosophy, history and the application of probabilistic thinking. It's also a great aggregator book. It introduced me to the works of Kahneman, Tetlock, Poincare and Mandelbrot.

The Selfish Gene & The Blind Watchmaker by Dawkins Evolution is the reason we exist! Understanding how it happens and why it can lead to counterintuitive outcomes is very important. He also narrates his own audiobooks and is excellent at it. The Blank Slate & The Better Angels of our Nature by Pinker Both books counter much accepted wisdom. The second book, in particular, will make you think of humanity in a fundamentally different light. The Black Swan & Fooled by Randomness by Taleb The role of chance in everyday life! It plays a big role!

I enjoyed all these. All of them are worth a read. Business / Tech Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Are Your Lights On?: How to Figure Out What the Problem Really Is. Managing Expectations: Working with People Who Want More: Working with People Who Want More, Better, Faster, Sooner, Now! Explore It!: Reduce Risk and Increase Confidence with Exploratory Testing. Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime-From Global Epidemic to Your Front Door. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. Badass: Making Users Awesome. Social Engineering in IT Security: Tools, Tactics, and Techniques. How to Make Sense of Any Mess: Information Architecture for Everybody. Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. The Global War for Internet Governance. Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking. Hate Crimes in Cyberspace. High Noon: The Inside Story of Scott McNealy and the Rise of Sun Microsystems. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet. The Soul of A New Machine.…

Totally agree with mountbranch here. Principles is fantastic. At the same time you may read and think "sure, common sense" but then did you think that before you read the item -- probably not. I feel this is a book to keep for a lifetime. Can't wait for Ray's economics book. Cool animated summary here: https://www.principles.com/principles-for-success/ The Dao of Capital is deeper. The chapter on Conifers (yeah, pine trees) and how they exist with and balance times of trouble versus opportunity is well worth the price of the book. Also, and not least, Nassim Taleb's books: Fooled By Randomness, Black Swan, and Anti-fragile. Poetic, deep, useful, and entertaining. Fantastic. A pleasure to read and listen to in audio while driving/traveling.

The Black Swan. By far.

Read the black swan and thinking fast and slow after, I think the combination is life changing. It was for me anyways. They really complement each other.

Taleb - Black Swan

+1 for Taleb's books. His Black Swan book actually inspired me to pursue a startup. However, his ideas are not actually that original (which is not a bad thing). One might get similar level of knowledge(albeit takes more time) from reading stoic philosophy, Popper's philosophy of science, tacit knowledge (Michael Polanyi) and complex system sciences.

Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan. At 17 I thought there was nothing that couldn't be achieved by shear will and concentrated effort. The Black Swan introduced me to the notion of Mediocristan and Extremistan, two very different domains with entirely different sets of risk. I don't think I'd have done anything differently, but had I read it earlier, I'd probably not have beat myself up so much when things didn't go well.

Here are some books that are a mix of psychology and economics that I think are especially suited for HN: Behavioral Economics: Predictably Irrational - Dan Ariely Nudge - Richard Thaler Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard - Chip and Dan Heath Economics: The Black Swan: Impact of the Highly Improbable - Nassim Taleb Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Taleb Drunkard's Walk - Leonard Mlodinow Psychology: Opening Skinner's Box - Lauren Slater Management: The Education of a Coach - David Halberstam