Statistics
The first major imagery of the book is statistical unlikeliness. As the reader appreciates their sense for likeliness and chance, they are invited into an imagery of future-speculation. They are using facts which have been manifested to speculate about the future. While there are benefits to appreciating trends, and while there is a spectrum of factuality and likeliness, Taleb invites the reader to imagine for a moment that human speculations about the impossible might be linked to the manifestation of unusual circumstances.
Science and analysis
The purpose of this book is to elevate a philosophical point of view to a level of scientific seriousness. To succeed in this goal, Taleb makes a case that nature has a tendency to use impossible-seeming circumstances to operate, like the fine-tuning of the material universe. By scientifically appreciating the systematic oddities of reality, the impossible statistically odds of this reality occurring as it has occurred already, the reader frees their self from the illusion of statistical likelihood. The analysis reveals that the human sense for speculation is essentially not reliable. We should expect what we do not expect.
Synchronicity
There needs to be a word for the imagery of unlikely circumstances occurring in a specifically mind-blowing way. By the time Taleb details the personal experience of fate, we see that synchronicity is an imagery which allows circumstances to unfold in an interestingly narrative way, even when statistic odds were stacked against someone. This is a good reason to really try in life, because even when things seem impossible, fortune can befall someone. The publication of her first book made Taleb a permanently successful writer.
Reality and philosophy
As a scientist, this neuroscientist has the universe's most sophisticated subject matter to analyze: the human brain. It is no wonder that her appreciation for absurdity is so acute. She deals daily in philosophically impossible realities by analyzing the infinitely complex process of evolution which through random and impossible-seeming circumstances led humans to this unthinkable level of cognition. The reality of life as experienced through the human brain leads the writer to philosophical considerations about absurdity and the reality of the material universe.
