The World's Best Book Summaries
What is a social epidemic? How does it start? Can social epidemics be useful? A social epidemic is the spread of ideas, messages, behaviors, and products through a population in the same way that viruses spread. The idea was popularized in the book The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. We’ll cover the requirements of social epidemics and how to create social epidemics to spread your ideas and sell your products.
What is epistemic arrogance? Who’s guilty of epistemic arrogance, and how does thinking we know what we actually don’t get us into trouble? Epistemic arrogance is the tendency to overestimate our ability to predict when we’re overconfident in our knowledge. We’re all guilty of epistemic arrogance, but it hits “experts” the hardest. We’ll cover how epistemic arrogance leads to bad predictions and why more information isn’t always better.
Who is Nassim Nicholas Taleb? How did he develop his popular “black swan” theory? The Black Swan is the second book in former options trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s five-volume series on uncertainty. This book analyzes so-called “Black Swans”—extremely unpredictable events that have massive impacts on human society. We’ll explore how Nassim Nicholas Taleb became obsessed with probability (or, more accurately, improbability) and how he developed his theory of black swans.
We don’t think of weak ties as good things–aren’t lasting friendships and deep connections what matter? We’ll cover why weak ties are important, especially in business and marketing. Learn why you should have a “connector,” someone with many weak ties, on your team.
What was Milgram’s “small-world experiment”? How did it research the way people are connected with one another? What does it say about our world? The small-world experiment was a study in the 1960s by psychologist Stanely Milgram. During the experiment, he sent chain letters and counted how many letters were sent before they reached their final destination. We’ll cover Milgram’s small-world experiment and look at how it spawned the six degrees of separation theory.
What’s a grey swan? How does it serve as a metaphor for events that aren’t predictable, exactly, but imaginable? A grey swan (alternately, gray swan) is a term for events that can’t be predicted but can be imagined. It can also refer to an event that’s unlikely but possible. The term was popularized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in the book Black Swan. We’ll cover what a grey swan is, how it fits in with black and white swans, and how to turn black swans grey.
Accurate predictions are hard to make. The world is full of uncertainty. How do you make plans when you can’t know the future? How do you deal with uncertainty? We’ll cover the difficulties with making accurate predictions and how to deal with uncertainty in an unpredictable world.
What are some of the greatest accidental discoveries in science that changed the world? How did they happen? We’ll cover some of the most life-changing accidental discoveries, from penicillin to the cosmic microwave background, and discuss why the most profound discoveries are often the ones that are inadvertent.
Why do you make bad predictions? Is there any way to make better predictions? According to Nassim Nicholas Taleb in The Black Swan, some of the most world-altering events are unpredictable. Although many day-to-day events can be predicted, humans are bad at making accurate predictions about many major events. We’ll look at 12 fallacies and cognitive biases that encourage your bad predictions.
What is the “six degrees of separation” theory? What does it say about how we’re connected? What is a 6 degrees of separation example? The six degrees of separation theory is the idea that every person in the world is connected to every other person in the world by a chain of family members, friends, or acquaintances that number no more than 5 people. The idea was popularized by the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.” We’ll cover the origins of the “six degrees of separation” theory, look at a 6-degrees-of-separation example, and see how the theory is connected to