What history doesn't tell us and why we can't predict anything

Another book tip for readers. I am in the process of finishing 'The Black Swan' by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I have to say that it is one of the most enlightening books that I have read in many years. The premise of Dr. Taleb, a former derivatives trader and current part-time professor at the University of Massachusetts, is that we are fooled by randomness in the world. That was in fact the name of his previous book, 'Fooled by Randomness'.

The 'Black Swan' is a reference to those large events, good and bad, that no one sees coming and that defy all prediction. The common view is that people simply miss the causal events that lead up to the unexpected. Dr. Taleb makes the compelling case that this is merely a reconstruction of a narrative that never existed. The events were impossible predict and that our need as humans for linkage and narrative forces us to recreate events and find connections where none exist. It is impossible to make accurate predictions about basically anything, but in particular about things that involve economics and the social sciences.

At first, one gets very disheartened by his argumentation, but Dr. Taleb writes well and humorously and also manages to come with remedies for how one should approach this problem of randomness. A very, very interesting book.