The Black Swan

Or The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Nassim Taleb shakes up all our expectations with this cogent and humorous description of how social and economic events are swayed more by herd influences and fadism than by random chance.

He cites example after example of overwhelming events that came out of the blue, such as the present soaring of oil prices, with little or no prediction. And he emphasizes the tendency of social “scientists” (laughable term) to forget or explain away these surprises because the human mind likes to think it can control or at least foresee, so explanations are made up after the event.

We need to be on the alert for these life shaping developments or at least mentally prepared to deal with them.