Coping with the Black Swan: The Unsettling World of Nassim Taleb

Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 21 (4):447-465 (2009)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

ABSTRACT Nassim Taleb rightly points out that although people may acknowledge in the abstract that the world is uncertain, they still behave as if a large enough sample size is all that is needed to predict, and model, the future. He also rightly notes that ever‐increasing quantities of information are relevant only in simple situations, such as in predicting the range of human height, but are misleading in more random arenas, such as financial markets. However, while Taleb decries the use of narratives for falsely forcing the facts to fit a given story, we need narratives in order to make sense of a complex world. Further, Taleb fails to take sufficient heed of the fact that human narratives themselves become objects that act on subjects in an ever‐increasing web of complexity.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 101,854

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Dissecting the Black Swan.Jochen Runde - 2009 - Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 21 (4):491-505.
Black Swans in Politics.Robert Jervis - 2009 - Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 21 (4):475-489.
Lebăda Neagră, un risc asumat – Merită?Sfetcu Nicolae - 2022 - Cunoașterea Științifică 1 (1):101-111.
Not a New Gold Standard: Even Big Data Cannot Predict the Future.Kai Jäger - 2016 - Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 28 (3-4):335-355.
History is Not Historicism.Gene Callahan - 2009 - Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 21 (4):467-474.

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-11-23

Downloads
121 (#180,115)

6 months
19 (#157,526)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

System effects and the problem of prediction.Jeffrey Friedman - 2012 - Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 24 (3):291-312.
Not a New Gold Standard: Even Big Data Cannot Predict the Future.Kai Jäger - 2016 - Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 28 (3-4):335-355.

Add more citations

References found in this work

A Treatise on Probability.John Maynard Keynes - 1921 - London,: Macmillan & co..
Risk, Uncertainty and Profit.Frank H. Knight - 1921 - University of Chicago Press.
Essays in Positive Economics.Milton Friedman - 1953 - University of Chicago Press.
A Treatise on Probability.J. M. Keynes - 1989 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 40 (2):219-222.

View all 11 references / Add more references