The Black Swan: Second Edition – The Impact of the Highly Improbable

The Black Swan: Second Edition is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series—an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we do not fully understand. Other books in the series include Fooled by Randomness, Antifragile, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes.

A Black Swan is a highly improbable event with three defining characteristics: it is unpredictable, it carries a massive impact, and after it occurs, we invent explanations that make it appear less random and more predictable than it truly was. The astonishing success of Google was a Black Swan. So was 9/11.

For Taleb, Black Swans underlie almost everything that shapes our world—from the rise of religions and financial crises to scientific discoveries and events in our own personal lives.

Why do we fail to recognize Black Swans before they happen? Taleb argues that humans are hardwired to focus on specifics when they should be thinking in generalities. We concentrate on what we already know while ignoring what we do not know, making us vulnerable to oversimplification, false narratives, and poor decision-making.

For years, Taleb has studied how we deceive ourselves into believing we understand the world far better than we actually do. We focus on the irrelevant and inconsequential while large, transformative events continue to surprise us and shape history.

This Second Edition includes a new philosophical and empirical essay, “On Robustness and Fragility,” offering practical tools to navigate—and even exploit—a Black Swan world.

Elegant, provocative, and universal in its applications, The Black Swan will permanently change the way you look at uncertainty, risk, and the modern world.

Key Highlights

• Explains rare, unpredictable events with massive real-world impact
• Challenges traditional forecasting and expert predictions
• Explores human bias, uncertainty, and decision-making
• Includes the new essay “On Robustness and Fragility”
• Part of the acclaimed Incerto philosophical series

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