People who have read and understood books by NNT cover to cover. How did you read it?
His books seems to be very different from other non-fiction books in general. I tried reading Black Swan. Found it very hard to understand. I also tried reading Skin in the game. Same experience.
I myself am not a very frequent reader of books. I have completed books like the alchemist, rich dad poor dad, richest man in babylon, pathless path.
The reason I want to read to NNT is it provides very unique perspective on things. There is always something to learn from different books. And I don’t want the hard-to-understand part of NNT books to come in way of new learnings.
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by shuvam2976
6 Comments
I’m not who you are asking this of, but I did want to offer my two cents. I quit *Black Swan* about halfway through. I nearly quit after the introduction due to how off-putting I found his writing voice. He comes across as wholly convinced of his own brilliance and his explanations for it. I agree with you, OP, there is always something to learn. With NNT, however, I suspect that he might not feel the same.
In a lot of ways, Taleb’s topics hit close to center of my professional sweet spot. As a young hedge fund analyst I read “Fooled by Randomness” and then, when I finished a master’s degree in statistics, I read “Black Swan” and “Antifragile”.
I liked the way he thought about outliers, error likelihoods, and external correlations that are unrelated to the internal systems being measured and modeled for projection and explanation.
I felt like Taleb did a good job explaining edge cases in my profession in ways that were personally useful as I approached my own projects. I’m probably his ideal audience so I can understand why others might find him less compelling.
His work is disorganised and repetitive and the expression ungainly. I also find the tone offputting. The ideas as far as they are supported by mathematics are interesting. My own feeling is that Taleb needs an editor to read him the Riot Act and to challenge his enormous confidence in his own readability.
So if you want a more accessible way in to the points Taleb is trying to make, I suggest you read the history book Manias Panics and Crashes, and also the generalist book Being Wrong Adventures on the Margins of Error.
As for me NNT is highly overrated. I agree with his books, but have to said it loadly that his books are’t written well. The athour is just unable to create good literature. He has awful and boring style, repeats the same all the time and for the great parts of his book (Black Swan) writes literarly about nothing.
I had to put down Antifragile about halfway through. He just kept defining his meaning of “antifragile” over and over again without providing any useful examples besides immune systems.
Also the book was littered with weird ego stroking flexes. He even included his current deadlift personal record even though it had nothing to do with the topic of the chapter.