Currently reading Fooled by Randomness, almost 20 years after it was published. By now I have read about a third of it. Up to now, it seems neither very insightful nor dense; all the insights (or observations) seem to be what you can read in the (relatively short) wikipedia article. It is also not extremely entertaining.
I wonder whether it was a revealing, revolutionary book back in the days, or whether it is different to people with a certain background (or lack thereof), such that my impression is, in some sense, biased. I also wonder whether the other books by Taleb are better, but given the praise that FbR seems to have received, I guess it is not likely that the Black Swan would be fundamentally different from FbR.
I read Black Swan early in my introduction to heuristics and biases, in my teens. I remember that the book was quite illuminating for me, though I disliked Taleb’s narcissism and his disrespect for the truth. I don’t think it was so much “insightful” as helping me internalize a few big insights. The book’s content definitely overlaps a lot with beginner rationality, so you might not find it worthwhile after all. I read a bit of FbR and about half of Antifragile as well, but I found those much less interesting.
An aside: Taleb talks about general topics. It’s hard to say new things in that market (it’s saturated), and the best parts of his new insights have already become part of the common lexicon.
Currently reading Fooled by Randomness, almost 20 years after it was published. By now I have read about a third of it. Up to now, it seems neither very insightful nor dense; all the insights (or observations) seem to be what you can read in the (relatively short) wikipedia article. It is also not extremely entertaining.
I wonder whether it was a revealing, revolutionary book back in the days, or whether it is different to people with a certain background (or lack thereof), such that my impression is, in some sense, biased. I also wonder whether the other books by Taleb are better, but given the praise that FbR seems to have received, I guess it is not likely that the Black Swan would be fundamentally different from FbR.
I read Black Swan early in my introduction to heuristics and biases, in my teens. I remember that the book was quite illuminating for me, though I disliked Taleb’s narcissism and his disrespect for the truth. I don’t think it was so much “insightful” as helping me internalize a few big insights. The book’s content definitely overlaps a lot with beginner rationality, so you might not find it worthwhile after all. I read a bit of FbR and about half of Antifragile as well, but I found those much less interesting.
An aside: Taleb talks about general topics. It’s hard to say new things in that market (it’s saturated), and the best parts of his new insights have already become part of the common lexicon.