Everyone wants to succeed in life. But what causes some of us to be more successful than others? This book aims to change the way you think about business and the world. It also seeks to shatter the illusions of people around the world by teaching them how to recognize randomness.
Incerto Series
This series delves into the profound role of randomness, uncertainty, and unpredictability in human affairs and financial markets. The author masterfully blends personal anecdotes with deep philosophical insights and mathematical concepts. Readers will explore how to navigate a world dominated by chance and understand our innate desire to impose order on chaos. It offers a thought-provoking exploration of risk, skepticism, and the true nature of reality.
Recommended Reading Order
The Black Swan
The Impact of the Highly Improbable
ABOUT THIS BOOK A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.
The bed of Procrustes
- 156 pages
- 6 hours of reading
The author of the modern classics The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, and Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb expresses major ideas in ways you least expect in this collection of aphorisms and meditations—now expanded with fifty percent more material than the hardcover. The Bed of Procrustes takes its title from the Greek myth of a man who made his visitors fit his bed to perfection, either by stretching them or by cutting their limbs. It represents Taleb’s view of modern civilization’s hubristic side effects—modifying humans to satisfy technology, blaming reality for not fitting economic models, inventing diseases to sell drugs, defining intelligence as what can be tested in a classroom, and convincing people that employment is not slavery. Playful and irreverent, these aphorisms will surprise you by exposing self-delusions you have been living with but never recognized. With a rare combination of pointed wit and potent wisdom, Taleb plows through human illusions, contrasting the classical values of courage, elegance, and erudition with the modern diseases of nerdiness, philistinism, and phonies.
From the bestselling author of The Black Swan and one of the foremost philosophers of our time, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a book on how some systems actually benefit from disorder. In The Black Swan Taleb outlined a problem; in Antifragile he offers a definitive solution: how to gain from disorder and chaos while being protected from fragilities and adverse events. For what he calls the "antifragile" is one step beyond robust, as it benefits from adversity, uncertainty and stressors, just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension. Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, and proposing that things be built in an antifragile manner. Extremely ambitious and multidisciplinary, Antifragile provides a blueprint for how to behave-and thrive-in a world we don't understand and which is too uncertain for us to even try to understand. He who is not antifragile will perish. Why is the city state better than the nation state, why is debt bad for you, and why is almost everything modern bound to fail? The book covers innovation, health, biology, medicine, life decisions, politics, foreign policy, urban planning, war, personal finance, and economic systems. Throughout, the voice and recipes of the ancient wisdom from Phoenician, Roman, Greek, and Medieval sources are heard loud and clear.
Skin in the Game. Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
- 304 pages
- 11 hours of reading
The phrase "skin in the game" is one we have often heard but have rarely stopped to truly dissect. It is the backbone of risk management, but it's also an astonishingly complex worldview that applies to all aspects of our lives. Nassim Nicholas Taleb pulls on everything from Antaeus the Giant to Hammurabi to Donald Trump to Seneca to the ethics of disagreement to create a tapestry for understanding our world in a brand new way. Among his insights: For social justice, focus on symmetry and risk sharing -- Ethical rules aren't universal -- Minorities, not majorities, run the world -- You can be an intellectual yet still be an idiot -- Beware of complicated solutions (that someone was paid to find) -- True religion is commitment, not just faith
Related books
Incerto Box Set
- 400 pages
- 14 hours of reading
New York Times bestselling author Nassim Taleb's landmark Incerto series - Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, The Bed of Procrustes - gathered together for the first time, in a beautifully designed box set.
Incerto 1-5 Box Set
- 5 volumes
Nassim Taleb's five landmark bestselling books have changed the way millions see the world and think about uncertainty, chance, volatility, and risk. They can be read individually but are also written to complement each other and actually comprise a single work: The Incerto. This boxed set is newly designed and offers readers one of the most significant intellectual projects of our time.
The Black Swan. Fooled by Randomness (2 Books in 1)
- 682 pages
- 24 hours of reading
The hidden role of of chance in life and in the markets.The impact of the highly improbable
Die "Incerto-Reihe" von Nassim Nicholas Taleb, die die Werke "Der Schwarze Schwan", "Narren des Zufalls", "Antifragilität" und das "Kleine Handbuch für den Umgang mit Unwissen" umfasst, untersucht die Rolle von Glück, Unsicherheit und Risiko in einer komplexen Welt. Daniel Kahneman beschreibt Talebs Einfluss auf seine Weltsicht.
