Black Box Thinking

Paperback. Pub Date :2013-06-06 Pages: 544 Language: English Publisher: Penguin Books The hottest thinker in the world Bryan Appleyard. Sunday TimesIn The Black Swan. Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world ... Here Taleb stands uncer-tainty on its head. making it desirable. even necessary The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust The resil-ient resists shocks and stays the same: the antifragile gets better and better.Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension. many things in life benefit from stress. disorder. volatility. and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls antifragile are things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish.Whats more . the antifragile is immune to prediction errors and protected from adverse events. Why is the cit...

Superb' - Tim Harford, author of How to Make the World Add UpMoney is essential to the economy and how we live our lives, yet is inherently worthless. We can use it to build a home or send us to space, and it can lead to the rise and fall of empires. Few innovations have had such a huge impact on the development of humanity, but money is a shared fiction: a story we believe in so long as others act as if it is true.Money is rarely out of the headlines – from the invention of cryptocurrencies to the problem of high inflation, extraordinary interventions by central banks and the power the West has over the worldwide banking system. In Money in One Lesson, Gavin Jackson answers the most important questions on what money is and how it shapes our world, drawing on vivid examples from throughout history to demystify and show how societies and its citizens, both past and present, are always entwined with matters of money.‘A highly illuminating, well-researched and beautifully written book on one of humanity’s most important innovations’ – Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator, Financial Times

Have you ever wondered why we can afford to buy far more clothes than our grandparents ever could ... but may be less likely to own a home in which to keep them all? Why your petrol bill can double in a matter of months, but it never falls as fast? Behind all of this lies economics. It's not always easy to grasp the complex forces that are shaping our lives. But by following a dollar on its journey around the globe, we can start to piece it all together. The dollar is the lifeblood of globalisation. Greenbacks, singles, bucks or dead presidents: call them what you will, they are keeping the global economy going. Half of the notes in circulation are actually outside of the USA - and many of the world's dollars are owned by China. But what is really happening as our cash moves around the world every day, and how does it affect our lives? By following $1 from a shopping trip in suburban Texas, via China's central bank, Nigerian railroads, the oilfields of Iraq and beyond, The Almighty Dollar reveals the economic truths behind what we see on the news every day. Why is China the world's biggest manufacturer - and the USA its biggest customer? Is free trade really a good thing? Why would a nation build a bridge on the other side of the planet? In this illuminating read, economist Dharshini David lays bare these complex relationships to get to the heart of how our new globalised world works, showing who really holds the power, and what that means for us all.