35 pages • 1 hour read
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
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Part 4, Chapter 19 - EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4, Chapter 19 Summary and Analysis
This chapter serves as the only chapter in Part 4 ("The End"). It departs in tone from the previous chapters, as Taleb adopts a more conversational, less didactic tone. He reveals some of his own ambivalence, while also offering the reader some advice. For instance, he writes: "half the time I am shallow, the other half I want to avoid shallowness" (296). Here Taleb is illustrating the complexity of holding two paradoxical beliefs or attitudes at once. Recognizing the possibility of Black Swans invites a paradoxical view of life that invites questions such as, "How do I enjoy the current moment while acknowledging that a Black Swan event, that could change the world, could happen at any moment?" Taleb suggests that by not "sweating the small stuff" there is freedom to enjoy the greatest Black Swan of all—the gift of human life (298).
Epilogue Summary and Analysis
Taleb returns to Yevgenia in this brief epilogue. He tells the story of Yevgenia’s second novel, greatly anticipated by her readers after the massive success of her first. Her second novel is a critical success but a commercial failure, which causes her publisher to essentially shutter the company.
In this short anecdote, Taleb illustrates that Black Swans can be either positive or negative. The difference, however, lies not only in the Black Swan’s outcomes, but also in how people experience them. Since Krasnova's worldview is centered around the expectation and acceptance of Black Swans, she can make peace with the commercial failure of her novel. What we experience internally is as—if not more—important to our happiness as external events.
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By Nassim Nicholas Taleb
