Many of us have personal anecdotes of situations that seemed regular or commonplace, until something amazing happened. The Black Swan is not always a truly terrible event in fact, it can be a very wonderful surprise! Hence, it was an unknown deviation, or a Black Swan.

While experts retroactively try to piece together circumstances and occasions that led up to the attacks, there was nothing on our radar at the time.

No one could have predicted what happened that day, or else we would have been prepared for it.įlights would have been grounded, the buildings impacted would have been evacuated or blockaded to prevent entry, and the entire tragedy would have been prevented. One truly tragic “Black Swan” event would be that of the attacks that occurred on 11, September 2001. This might be a hard concept to consider at first, so let’s look at some examples. This means that, even though there was no way to know that this event was going to occur, people start looking back at the chain of circumstances leading up to it, as if to learn how they could have predicted it. Once the event has happened, people apply “retrospective predictability” to the event.Whether extremely positive or extremely negative depends on the event and your own perspective. This is not something that happens frequently or on a regular schedule or cycle. In fact, Taleb outlines three specific criteria for considering an event a “Black Swan”: Because you’ve never seen a black swan, you’ve never even considered the possibility that they exist.Īn event is considered a “Black Swan” if it is just as unpredictable and unknown. Therefore, if you’ve only ever seen white swans, seeing a black swan for the first time is going to be shocking. People tend to limit their learning and knowledge to that which they have directly observed or experienced. The title of the book, and the concept Taleb outlines, comes from a common knowledge foible. 5 The Practical Advice What Is a Black Swan?

The black swan book nassim taleb