Wednesday, February 28, 2018

The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Read the book "The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb... A black swan is an absolutely unforeseen event that dwarfs all other considerations of influence.

 In the book he explains that in European history there were a set of "truisms" which expressed the same attitude as "Does a Bear Shit in the Woods? or "Is the Pope Catholic?" -- meaning "OF COURSE YOU IDIOT". One of those truisms for two thousand years was "Isn't a swan white?" AND THEN in early 1700 Captain Cook sailed to Australia and found a black swan. All of a sudden that saying was no longer true. It was as if the Pope wasn't Catholic and Bears no longer shit in the woods but used latrines like humans. The discovery of Black Swans was absolutely unthinkable, unanticipated, and not even considered a possibility before Captain Cook sailed to Australia... Read the book "The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He does a better job explaining than me.



copyright (c) 2018
William Schaeffer

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