244. The Black Swan Book Summary (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)

<p>If you want to <a href= "http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/time-management-book-writing/">write a book</a>, don’t ask, “How much money does the average book make?” In this context, “average” is meaningless. You’re in the world of Black Swans.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><em>The Black Swan</em> is a book by Nicholas Nassim Taleb, and I have found the ideas in it critical to navigating my career as an author. Here – in my own words – is my summary of <a href= "https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00139XTG4?tag=kadavyinc-20"><em>The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable</em></a>. These are the ideas I think about when I’m considering writing a new book.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph --><!-- /wp:paragraph --> <p> </p> <!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3>Where does the term “Black Swan” come from?</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --><!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Imagine a world where you’ve only ever seen white swans. If someone asked you whether or not black swans existed, you might say no.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>You’ve seen thousands of swans, and they’ve all been white. Therefore, black swans don’t exist.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>You’ve mistaken an absence of evidence for evidence of absence. Just because you haven’t seen evidence of black swans, does not prove they don’t exist.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3>What is a Black Swan?</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --><!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><strong>A positive Black Swan:</strong> In 2010, I wrote a blog post. That blog post prompted a publisher to reach out to me. I got a book deal.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><strong>A negative Black Swan:</strong> A Las Vegas casino had an insurance policy. They protected against every cheating scenario they could imagine. They had the most popular show in Vegas, where magicians worked with giant live tigers. So they protected against the scenario of a tiger jumping into the audience. But they never imagined the tig