Black Swan - The Impact of the Highly Improbable

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Tim Walther and Erick Erickson

Have you ever had an experience in which, in hind-site, you explain, but before the event took place you never could have predicted it?  Add a dramatic impact and you have the essence of the Black Swan - the highly improbable consequential event.

Those of you know me well realize that I am continuously seeking to understand the realm of Quantum Physics, ESP, the Law of Attraction, and other invisible yet powerful universal energy principles.  My great friend Ivan Huber who lives in Colorado recommended - and then gifted the Black Swan to me. I consider Ivan quite an intellectual and respectfully embraced his recommendation - explaining to myself after the fact that this book came to me for a reason.

This book, the Black Swan, has taken me to that enjoyable place of deep contemplation - philosophical meanderings of epistemology, and even the Platonic Fold - where our representation of reality ceases to apply - but we don’t know it. 

Before the discovery of Australia, people of the Old World were convinced that ALL swans were white, an unassailable belief as it seemed completely confirmed by empirical evidence. According to Taleb, a Black Swan is an event that consists of three elements: It’s a random event, outside what one might expect to occur, second, the event carries extreme impact, and third, despite that it is an outlier (and unexpected) human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.

The imperitive of this line of thinking makes what you don’t know more relevant than what you do know.

One of the fascinating components of the Black Swan, is that it is written in a way in which elements of risk taking and predictability are also explored in a societal context. What Taleb refers to as Mediocristan verses Extremistan -  are ways of considering two very different types of uncertainty or randomness. The former being when the sample is too large to have a significant impact on the aggregate, and the latter when a single observation can disproportionately impact the aggregate, or total. If you are understanding what I am talking about - then great - I am half way through the book - and look forward to exploring and explaining and discussing some of these concepts.  in conclusion, a couple questions come to mind. What events of your past have you experienced, and then explained in hind site with no real empirical evidence - just a “sense” as to why it occurred?   In evaluating your life-style and plan, are you banking on a highly improbable event to occur - or NOT occur - to direct your success?  If one seemingly random event took place in your job, what would be the impact? Could you recognize a BLACK SWAN if you saw one?

I will leave you with this quote from Captain EJ Smith of the Titanic from 1907.*  “But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident…of any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort.” * Captain Smith’s ship sank in 1912 in what has become the most talked about shipwreck in history…

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