Nassim Nicholas Taleb - What is a "Black Swan?"

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2008/02/04/Future_Has_...

Author Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses the central theme of his bestselling book, "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable."

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The Future Has Always Been Crazier Than We Thought with Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Author Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses his book, The Black Swan in relation to predicting the future, learning from the consequences of the unknown, and the power of randomness.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an essayist, belletrist, and researcher only interested in one single topic, chance (particularly extreme and rare events, the "Black Swans" i.e. outliers); but it falls at the intersection of philosophy/epistemology (skepticism; knowledge about the dynamics of history; inferential claims), philosophy/ethics (stoicism facing random events; theories of nonhedonic happiness), mathematical sciences (probability theory, statistical physics), social science/finance (opacity & incomplete information in economics), and cognitive science (the mental biases making us "fooled" by randomness). He mainly derives his intuitions from a 2-decade long and intense practice of derivatives trading ("nondull" activities with plenty of randomness).

Taleb is currently a researcher at London Business School. He the Dean’s Professor in the Sciences of Uncertainty University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Fellow in Mathematics in Finance, Adjunct Professor of Mathematics at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University (since 1999), and research fellow, Wharton School Financial Institutions Center, and Chairman, Empirica LLC.

Taleb held senior trading positions with trading houses in New York and London and operated as a floor trader before founding Empirica LLC. His degrees include an MBA from the Wharton School and a Ph.D. from the University of Paris. He is the author of Dynamic Hedging, Fooled by Randomness, and The Black Swan.

• Category

  News & Politics

[Shawn Winters]

So what? so what if "harry potter" is a black swan? That tells us nothing...

[EGarrett01]

There are a lot of brilliant people who express themselves quite well in a second language. Taleb simply doesn't. His books, while they consist of interesting ideas, are also rambling in this manner.

[crazybrain007]

because english is not his first language, read the book then you will...

[Nbarjest]

yeah, and because of that we should try to decrease the impact of undesirable black swans.

[hedieh hafezi]

maybe the point is that, we should all the time and about every single issue think that there is a black swan sitting there and that there are a lot that we dont know and we cant predict

[Judin Kinds]

so black swans can only be known after the event?so what's the point?

[Donovan Moore]

What does he have against ballet dancers? I don't get it.

[Karthick Muthiyah]

nice.

[Marco Kimani]

He needs to speak slower... he needs an oral coach because this lets his brilliant message down. Speak slower, enunciate your vowels, project your voice a bit more.

I would much rather he spoke with a stronger Arabic accent that was clear than this mumbled delivery.

[Marco Kimani]

Brilliant man but he needs to learn TO SPEEAAK SLOOWER AN PRONOUNCE EACH WOORD MORE CAREFULLY BECAUSE WEE CANNOT UNDERSTAND HIM SOMETIMES... this is his biggest weakness as a orator... hespeakssofastandswallowssome vowels...