So, after another round of scratching head on the swan; do I still insist that first book is better? Honestly... YES, LOL! Ok, the swan was still too prolixity to me. End of the day, I still think there are a better way to express the swan. After all, I think some readers may not want to dig that further into the swan... especially when "Fooled By Randomness" had showed its randomness with simple yet understandably wordings...
Well, please do not get me wrong... I actually love this book. After a second read, I still think this book deserved a rating of 9/10. The only point being deducted was due to its complexity (which I think can be avoided) when compares with the first book. Every reread on this book serves as a good reminder as well as some refreshment to my career. After all, I deal with black swan now and then...
Here we are with some of the quotes that I found useful... Obviously, there is a lot of differences compares to last read. Maybe I had improved... or maybe, I had accepted that I am actually one of the extraordinary black swans too... LOL.
"One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." Statistic stay silent in us.
Readers would not pay $26.95 for a story of failure, even if you convinced them that it had more useful tricks than a story of success.
It is why we do not see Black Swan: We worry about those that had happened, not those that may happen but did not.
The more detailed knowledge one gets of empirical reality the more one will see the noise and mistake it for actual information... listening to the news on radio every hour is far worse than reading a weekly magazine, because the longer interval allows information to be filtered a bit.
These "experts" were lopsided: on the occasions when they were right, they attributed it to their own depth of understanding and expertise; when wrong, it was either the situation that was to blame, since it was unusual, or, worse, they did not recognize that they were wrong.
We attribute our successes to our skills, and our failures to our external events outside our control, namely to randomness... this causes us to think that we are better than others at whatever we do for a living.
Perhaps the wise one is the one who knows that he cannot see things far away.
So, why on earth do we plan? Some people do it for monetary gains, others because it's their job. But, we also do it without such intentions - spontaneously.
We have a natural tendency to listen to the expert, even in fields where there may be no experts.
We are made to follow leaders who can gather peoples together because the advantages of being in a group trump the disadvantages of being alone. It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one.
We grossly overestimate the length of the effect of misfortune on our lives... More likely, you will adapt to anything, as you probably did after past misfortunes.
Our problem is not just that we do not know the future, we do not know much of the past either.
Avoid the big subjects that may hurt your future: be fooled in small matters, not in the large. Do not listen to economic forecasters or to predictors in social science (they are mere entertainers), but do make your own forecast for the picnic.
American culture encourages the process of failure... America's specialty is to take these small risks for the rest of the world. Once established, an idea is later "perfected" over there.
People are often ashamed of losses, so they engage in strategies that produce very little volatility but contain the risk of large loss... People hate volatility, thus engage in strategies exposed to blowups.
If you know that you are vulnerable to predictions errors because of the black swan, then your strategy is to be as hyper-conservative and hyper-aggressive as you can be instead of being mildly aggressive or conservative.
If venture capital firms are profitable, it is not because of the stories they have in their heads, but because they are exposed to unplanned rare events.
You have high risk on one side and no risk on the other... the average will be medium risk but constitutes a positive exposure to the black swan.
Invest in preparedness, not in prediction.
Trading may have princess, but nobody stays as a king.
The people you meet on the way up, you will meet again on the way down.
We are quick to forget that just being alive is an extraordinary piece of good luck... So, stop sweating the small stuff... Remember that you are a Black Swan.
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