"Black Swan Effect" after reading｜Maggie chats about books

Seeing the thickness of the book "The Black Swan Effect ", and then flipping through the ant-like words in it, it really makes people go back three steps. I should have read this book for a month, and I read it once in the middle, but I still bite Tooth finished it.

There is a lot of content in it, including the three-body problem, the Gaussian model, the survival fallacy, etc. These proper nouns are very troublesome, the author of this book Nassim. Nicholas. Taleb, also the author of Antifragile, is a thinker and a skeptical empiric who likes to study randomness, uncertainty, and rare events (the black swan effect), where humans use the wrong information to predict the wrong future , and then rationalize the wrong future.

This book is really about outliers, or deviations, where everyone thinks things should go in a certain direction, and then suddenly something unexpected happens.

The 100 days that the turkey has passed safely, what it did not expect is that the 100th day is "Thanksgiving".

The black swan effect is about people who believed that swans were only white before the discovery of Australia, and everyone believed that swans should be white, until one day someone discovered the existence of black swans, breaking people's cognition of swans.

This book runs through all the themes, and the central idea to be expressed is that experience values and data logic cannot represent everything. They severely limit human thinking and make our knowledge vulnerable.

Narrative Fallacy, Survival Fallacy

We are always used to imposing objective facts on ourselves, those who survived the shipwreck, they all prayed to the gods sincerely, so they survived, so there is the fallacy that prayers can survive , Those who did not survive may have also prayed, but he had no way to tell the crowd that he prayed but did not survive.

Five years ago, Eugenia Nikolavina Krasnoa, an unknown novelist whose three husbands were philosophers, incorporated her theories into stories, except for a few of scientists are interested in her work, publishers are confused about her manuscript, they don't know Eugenia's book, is it fiction or non-fiction? The audience is locked in which group of people, and even thinks that her book can only sell ten copies, just her relatives and friends.

Eugenia took a writing class, and her peculiar writing mode made her considered hopeless in her life.

Never backing down and stubborn, Eugenia became a stoic, independent writer, and her books grew into a fever, becoming a great and bizarre achievement in literary history, selling millions of copies and translated into forty languages. Fiction incorporates elements of fiction and non-fiction, science and art.

She later met editors from many publishers and told her that if she went to them to publish, the editors would have seen Eugenia's excellence at a glance, people are good at rationalizing what has happened, otherwise Harry Potter would not have happened The author was rejected 12 times, and no one knew who would be the next lucky one.

Eugenia's book is a black swan event.

Black swan events only appear in extreme worlds. Some occupations belong to the mediocre world, such as dentists, consultants and consultants. It is difficult for them to have black swans. There is a limit to the number of patients or clients a dentist can have. The number is fixed, so their remuneration can also be calculated.

However, occupations in the extreme world, such as writers, actors, singers, and artists, are occupations that live in the extreme world. In the extreme world, it is very unfair. The average sales volume of a thousand writers is mostly appalling, but there are always One person, a black swan like Harry Potter author Rowling, can earn hundreds of thousands of writers combined.

If you want to be a black swan, you must first endure the sweet trap of anticipation. Eugenia read a novel at the age of 13. The protagonist of the novel, Zhuo Guo, is a junior officer who graduated from the military academy. He is sent to The border of the desert to resist the invasion of the enemy, Zhuo Guo thought that his stationing here was only temporary, and he would leave this desert when a better job appeared.

Zhuo Guo waited for thirty-five years. On the hill that no one has ever crossed, the enemy finally appeared. At the end of the novel, what Zhuo Guo had been waiting for finally happened, but he missed it, and Zhuo Guo died on the road. In a small hotel next door.

The author uses this story as a metaphor for a black swan. A black swan is a miracle, it is one in ten thousand. If you choose the profession of a black swan, maybe a writer, artist, or creative, you may spend your whole life waiting for success, but Maybe it was only a few years after your death that your book or painting became a big seller, which is the case with many well-known painters.

The three-body problem, the so-called three-body problem, means that if there is a small disturbance in the initial state, it may have a great impact on the later state, resulting in unpredictable final results. Human future medicine is more complicated than the three-body problem. Now, we must accept that the future cannot be predicted, but the only way to counteract the unknown is to increase your anti-strike ability, which is to increase the "surplus".

In economics, surplus actually means extra resources and low efficiency. Just like insurance, what he avoids is an unknown risk. Who knows if there will be an accident tomorrow, and if there is no accident in this life, then Insurance is a useless asset allocation.

None of us know whether the risk will come tomorrow, just as companies cannot predict whether consumers will still love their products ten years from now.

Forty years later, only 74 of the top 500 companies in the United States in 1957 are still in the top 500. Only a few have disappeared due to mergers and acquisitions. The rest of the companies are not shrinking or going bankrupt.

People rarely talk about luck, but a company's big sales are largely due to luck. Those who have achieved success may not be all capable. For those who once stood in high positions, luck can make him fall to the bottom in an instant. Ninety percent of the search engines that everyone uses now use Google, but think about it, once Yahoo was the largest search engine, now less than 30 percent of people use it.

To predict whether a technology will become a global mainstream means that you have to predict the huge and unknown elements of fashion and social popularity at the same time, and these are simply impossible to predict. Many products are casual products, like Wilgang was originally used as a drug for high blood pressure, and another drug for high blood pressure later developed into a hair growth drug. Most of their research was discovered by accident.

We often rationalize cause and effect. His success is because he worked hard, but why people who work harder than him are not reported because those people have not succeeded.

A psychologist asked many women to choose their favorite stockings from twelve pairs of nylon stockings. The researchers then asked the women why they chose this pair of stockings.

These ladies are right to try to enhance their choices with reasons such as material, feel, color, etc. In fact, the twelve pairs of socks are exactly the same.

Our bodies seem to have a sense-making machine that automatically rationalizes things.

When you first read this book, you might think, well, this is supposed to teach you how to predict the stock market, how to predict the occurrence of terrorist events, but the saying in this book is "don't trust so-called expert predictions."

Although we cannot predict the future, we can take advantage of black swans.

1. Distinguish between positive and negative surprises. In terms of occupations, try to distinguish between those jobs that may give you a positive black swan effect and those that may have a negative black swan effect.

A negative black swan will bring serious shocks and injuries. If your occupation is a soldier, no matter how good a black swan is, you will be promoted to the highest level, but the worst thing you will face may be death or disability in war. .

If you are a bank lender, the best outcome is that you receive a large bonus, but the worst case is that you can't get all the money you lent back.

However, a positive black swan may be publishing houses, scientific research, and venture capital industries. You lose a small amount of money for every book sold, but it is completely unpredictable, because any book and any idea may sell well.

2. Don't look for something clear and narrow, simply don't be narrow-minded, opportunities are for those who are ready, don't look for some special money-making job every day, what you have to do is work hard, and then let incidents enter your working life .

Don't try to predict black swans, predict stocks, predict the direction of the economy, predict whether there will be a war tomorrow, these are all in vain, the only thing you have to do is to bet on work and be fully prepared.

3. Seize any opportunity.

Opportunities are far rarer than you think. The first step of a positive black swan is that you must be exposed to it. You may be a director, writer, publisher, or film company. Expose yourself as much as possible to improve the chance of casual encounters. , and then you get the chance.

4. Beware of the government's explicit plans

This is not to say that you do not trust the government at all, but that you must remain vigilant at all times.

Don't put too much trust in the performance of big companies and senior managers. Many performances can't predict the future from the perspective of short-term performance. The great philosopher Yugi Bella once said, don't waste time with forecasters and stock market analysts. Teachers, economists and sociologists fight because their predictions are useless, but many people just believe it.

Stop worrying about the pain of missing your train

We often put ourselves in a tense and painful mood because of catching a train. When we feel the elegance of life and the true value of aesthetics, a feeling of controlling our own time, itinerary, and our own voice, we feel that we can calmly face to this world.

We don't have to suffer because we can't achieve the success of others, and we don't have to work hard because we pursue the envious vision of others, because when you pursue it, you will only feel pain.

When you are in the middle of an office fight and quit your high-paying job, if it is your final decision, the reward it brings seems to be more than the utility of the money. The author uses abstinence to throw it towards fate A big fork, if you can make your own decisions based on your own standards, you will be more in control of your own life.

Nature puts us in prison. What we don't get is always the best. When you can refuse the temptation of luxury, you will get more. If you are a brave person, try to give up all temptations and be your true self. .

Continuing the story of Eugenia just now, Eugenia started the next book, she entered the hibernation of writing a book for eight years, she stayed in New York City, because she felt that she could find peace here, she also invited A secretary came to help her type, she spent eight years rewriting and rewriting, occasionally getting angry with the secretary, and then interviewing a new secretary, she felt that this time writing was more devoted than the previous book, she even felt that her own The previous book was a superficial, hastily finished work.

Finally, the book "Ring" was written, and it was published with great reviews, but strangely, not many people bought it, the publisher bet all his wealth on Eugenia, and there were no other popular books, published A year and a half later, the book "The Ring" went out of print and the publisher was in financial trouble.

Eugenia's second book, also a black swan event, this time with a negative black swan.

The uncertainty here is not only a metaphor for the fluctuation of the stock market. The author makes people try their best to participate in the extreme world. It is not certainty, but it is not full investment, but hard work. At the same time, waiting for the occurrence of accidental emergencies in the extreme world, that is, after the stock market crashes, you will You can get luck that 99% of people can't get.

To be honest, after reading it, I still can’t fully understand what the author wants to express. He makes everything less certain. There are gray areas in the middle of black and white. I have read this book for a long time, and I really want to work hard. I think about what the author wants to express, but I still don’t know what he wants to say when I think of the headache. Maybe I haven’t reached that stage in my life, and I am ignorant about many things. I will look back at this book after three or five years. Maybe There will be a different experience.

After reading this book, a lot of my brain cells were burned to death, especially when I saw the three-body problem and the Gaussian model, which forced me to look up a bunch of proper terms on the Internet. The author also has another book on antifragility. The black swan effect is comparable. After reading it, you can write a paper. Next time, I will share the book " Antifragile " with you.

The above are some of the experiences of this book shared by Maggie. Friends who like my sharing remember to leave me a message below, then we will see you in the next book.

book information;

Title: The Black Swan Effect

Author: Nasim. Nicholas. Taleb

Publisher: Dagui Culture

Reading Moo e-book link: http://moo.im/a/prxzFJ

Further reading:

Why are we always unable to restrain consumption? Why can't I always save money?

The better off others are, the more anxious we are

30 years of "advertising masters" tell you, stop using logic for sales.

Original link Maggie's mother talks about insurance and life