Which Nassim Nicholas Taleb Book Do I Read First?

[Mister Imperceptible]

Is it advantageous to read sequentially? Or are his earlier ideas more fleshed out in later works? Is one of his books especially quintessential and captures most of his ideas? I have three other authors on my list and will not be able to fully dedicate myself to the “Incerto.”

[TheProcess]

I have read most of them. There are common threads and interesting connections throughout them all but I can't think of any single book that summarizes all the ideas. I would pick whichever one seems the most interesting. They all took me longer to read than I thought they would - good ideas, discursive, a bit disconnected. I did not read them sequentially and didn't find it a hindrance.

I do think the earlier ones were a little more pleasant to read because he indulges less in his annoying schtick where he ad hominems all the people who disagree with him. But in the later books his ideas are maybe a little more developed, or at least he has by now taken his earlier ideas and connected them to interesting new ones.

[ThisDinosaur]

This guy on Quora suggests AntiFragile and Black Swan effectively summarize the whole set.

https://www.quora.com/In-what-order-sho ... es-be-read

Honestly, they all kind of run together in my memory.

[Jin+Guice]

I've read them all and would recommend sequential as later books do refer back to previous ideas. I'm a fan of reading books/ listening to anthologies sequentially as you can see the ideas form and change. I wouldn't argue this is strictly necessary for Taleb's books though, if one is really calling you I'd start there instead.

[NPV]

Black Swan: many important things in the world are not Gaussian
Antifragile: bet on things with more upside than downside

Now you don't need to read any. You are welcome

[jacob]

@NPV - All covered in his first book with math: https://www.amazon.com/Dynamic-Hedging- ... 471152803/

Unless one prefers the light non-fiction reads, I'd go straight for his papers.

https://arxiv.org/search/?searchtype=au ... leb%2C+N+N

[ThisDinosaur]

Good find. That Precautionary Principle paper is what changed my mind about GMOs.

[ZAFCorrection]

Wow, I can't believe I didn't think to read his papers. I stopped after a couple chapters of Antifragile because I couldn't handle the constant macho posturing.

[Fish]

http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/FatTails

On this page one can find links to the “Technical Incerto” which is an in-work textbook version of the series. No cost to the reader! I’m not qualified to review it (barely qualified to even read the technical sections), but appears more than good enough to share. The table of contents in the 1st volume indicates non-technical chapters for those allergic to math (there are also non-technical sections in vol2 but you’ll need to skim to find them).

[Alphaville]

Black Swan: many important things in the world are not Gaussian
Antifragile: bet on things with more upside than downside

Now you don't need to read any. You are welcome

haaahaaahaaaahaaa!

i came to ask the same quesrion as the thread’s subject. now i don’t have to?

—

eta: fooled by randomness was free for e-checkout so this solves that philosophical conundrum

eta: oh, found the incerto 4-book bundle at the library also...

[onewayfamily]

Start with his book of aphorisms to get an idea of his humour and how his brain works - then move on through the set as you please. They do sort of 'go in order' but can definitely be read as stand-alone books as well.

[Alphaville]

i got an idea from his article on masks where he insults everyone (hilarious).

i took a detour with some other stuff so i havent yet started, so your suggestions are timely. thanks!

[Alphaville]

well well well, the book of aphorisms was great, but now i’m looking for the source so i just began “fooled by randomness.”

i love immediately that it’s a highly readable book, not merely about “ideas.” he says he wrote it for pleasure, and it shows, and i’m having so much fun with it right away...

i am certainly enjoying a bit of confirmation bias with his embracing of uncertainty and i enjoy seeing it so well articulated with literary references and one vivid metaphor after another.

[Alphaville]

o man, “fooled by randomness” is so great! i’m sorry it took me this long to read. i’ve wasted 16 years!!

it’s too exciting for me to read in one sitting. i start going crazy and must put it down— haaa haaa haaah! almost want to rush to build a monte carlo simulator without any further consideration.

this was clearly the place to start, as the sometimes hermetic aphorisms refer to ideas that were developed here. i assume also that black swan will refer back to this because obviously this was the opening move.

and his understanding of “historical mistakes” is brilliantly eye-opening. obvious, yet ignored by everyone. so much so, it keeps me laughing for hours.

I will repeat this point until I get hoarse: A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information until that point.

that there is the equivalent to at least 6 months of therapy

i love ebooks

[Alphaville]

so glad to not have devoured “fooled by randomness” in one sitting, and to be taking time to let its effects take hold as i go.

under its influence, for the evening entertainments last night i went looking for “disaster” in the film offerings, and added many historical documentaries to my list, but ended watching “margin call,” which, while fictional, is based on goldman sachs dumping mortgage backed securities at the outset of the 2008 financial crisis. it’s a great “filmed play,” a bit reminiscent of aaron sorkin when one thinks about it. anyway, i love it when things percolate through the brain.

[jacob]

"Margin Call" is in my opinion the best (and perhaps most underrated) Wall Street movie made about the financial crisis, slightly better than the Big Short. When I say "best", it's probably because I can relate better to the "nerd"/quant perspective of the movie and how such things move up the chain. For a book describing how the GFC unfolded on WS, I recommend https://www.amazon.com/Too-Big-Fail-Was ... 670021253/

[Alphaville]

ah! another sorkin! thanks man. i’ll add to the library wishlist.

so you’re the rocket scientist. have you written about your experiences somewhere? curious to read.

currently i have a more immediate type of disaster scenario in mind... getting mental alarms as of this morning... i might discuss elsewhere.

[Alphaville]

just finished “fooled by randomness.” hilarious ending!

i might take a little detour before starting black swan. a sort of “pause normande” lol. don’t want to blur it all into an indistinguishable porrige.

[Alphaville]

just started black swan today; planning to look back at fooled by randomness and kahneman’s book at the same time.

Isn’t it strange to see an event happening precisely because it was not supposed to happen? What kind of defense do we have against that?

ah, to live in an absurd universe...! horrors aside, a great way to open: with both barrels:

The payoff of a human venture is, in general, inversely proportional to what it is expected to be.

What is surprising is not the magnitude of our forecast errors, but our absence of awareness of it.

the reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or “incentives” for skill.

Living on our planet, today, requires a lot more imagination than we are made to have. We lack imagination and repress it in others.

The highly expected *not happening* is also a Black Swan.

Why do we formulate theories leading to projections and forecasts without focusing on the robustness of these theories and the consequences of the errors?




great prologue, too much to quote

[Alphaville]

a black swan footnote from chapter four:

Indeed, the tragedy of capitalism is that since the quality of the returns is not observable from past data, owners of companies, namely shareholders, can be taken for a ride by the managers who show returns and cosmetic profitability but in fact might be taking hidden risks.

the *quality* of the returns...