The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2 Ed.)

亞馬遜、《經濟學人》、《彭博商業週刊》、《金融時報》年度推薦好書
亞馬遜非文學類銷售冠軍
《紐約時報》、《華爾街日報》排行榜長銷暢銷書

The Black Swan
所謂黑天鵝，是指看似極不可能發生的事件，它具三大特性：不可預測性；衝擊力強大；以及，一旦發生之後，我們會編造出某種解釋，使它看起來不如實際上那麼隨機，而且更易於預測。Google的驚人成就就是一個黑天鵝事件；九一一也是。作者認為黑天鵝潛藏在幾乎每一件事的背後－－從宗教之興起，到我們個人生活中的大小事件。

為什麼要等到事情發生之後，我們才認得出黑天鵝現象呢？部分的答案是，在應該注意普遍現象時，人們長久以來卻習慣注意特定事件。我們習慣注意已經知道的事情，卻一而再再而三忽略我們所不知道的事情。因此，我們無法真正地評估機會；我們很容易將事情簡化、予以敘述、分類；而且我們不夠開放，沒能珍視那些能夠想像「不可能事物」的人。

多年來，作者一直在研究我們是怎樣欺騙自己，以為自己知道的比實際上知道的還多。我們總是只看到無足輕重的事情，而大的事件卻繼續在你我的驚嘆聲中出現，並形塑著這個世界。本書試圖解釋我們對於「我們所不知道的事物」所知道的一切。作者提出簡單得令人吃驚的技巧，協助讀者面對黑天鵝現象，並從這些意外的大事件獲益。

優雅、驚豔，且應用廣泛，《黑天鵝效應》猛力衝擊了文化業、社交圈和知識界，成為琅琅上口、被廣為引用的概念和詞彙。作者在擴充新版中新增五萬餘字，提出違反直覺卻實用的作法，能提高社會和我們自己對黑天鵝事件的免疫力，得以在極端世界中生存。《黑天鵝效應》已改變了許多人的世界觀，生活在黑天鵝事件層出不窮的世界，每個人都該讀這本書。

本中文書介出自《黑天鵝效應》大塊文化出版股份有限公司出版

The Black Swan 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 don’t understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, Antifragile, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes.

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.

Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the “impossible.”

For years, Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. In this revelatory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don’t know, and this second edition features a new philosophical and empirical essay, “On Robustness and Fragility,” which offers tools to navigate and exploit a Black Swan world.

Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications, The Black Swan will change the way you look at the world. Taleb is a vastly entertaining writer, with wit, irreverence, and unusual stories to tell. He has a polymathic command of subjects ranging from cognitive science to business to probability theory. The Black Swan is a landmark book—itself a black swan.

Praise for Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“The most prophetic voice of all.”—GQ

Praise for The Black Swan

“A book that altered modern thinking.”—The Times (London)

“A masterpiece.”—Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired, author of The Long Tail

“Idiosyncratically brilliant.”—Niall Ferguson, Los Angeles Times

“The Black Swan changed my view of how the world works.”—Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate

“Taleb writes in a style that owes as much to Stephen Colbert as it does to Michel de Montaigne. . . . We eagerly romp with him through the follies of confirmation bias and narrative fallacy.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Hugely enjoyable—compelling . . . easy to dip into.”—Financial Times

“Engaging . . . The Black Swan has appealing cheek and admirable ambition.”—The New York Times Book Review