What does Black Swan has to do with our lives?

Our minds are wonderful explanation machines, capable of making sense out of almost anything, capable of mounting explanations for all manner of phenomena, and generally incapable of accepting the idea of unpredictability.



I got this book, "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable", by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I am still half way through the book, and I have to say this is one of those books that I have difficulty to follow, yet I am attracted by it. It is a book with the combination of (modern) philosophy, science (maybe more on anthropology and with plenty of what he calls "thought experiments"), and psychology. All these aspects center on one thing (so far where I got), randomness. What is the relationship between human and randomness (e.g. unpredictable events)? The impact is huge! One example of the book (which I hope I didn't misplace) is that the "appearance" of the Internet is not planned, it is just appeared randomly (or invented out of expectation). And, look how Internet is changing our lives forever! This book looks into all these randomness (what the author calls Black Swans) and how we human beings naively trying to explain or make sense of all these randomness.

I have to say, it is quite fun to read. I like the author's way of explaining stuff. He has used what I call plain English to explain something I wouldn't understand, and he likes to use simple examples. However, I am not entirely convinced though at some parts of the book (even though I am only half way through). For instance, in a way I feel like the author is asking us "give up" on explaining stuff, just accept as it is. Maybe he is right about some aspects, but for some other aspects, probably we need to find explanation. Anyway, just my own thought, I could be wrong, cause again, this book for me is quite informative, and quite a lot to digest.

Overall, I enjoy it! It is quite a ride so far! And, I believe he still has a lot on his belt to surprise me.