![]() ![]() Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable. What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes.įirst, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. I push one step beyond this philosophical-logical question into an empirical reality, and one that has obsessed me since childhood. All you need is one single (and, I am told, quite ugly) black bird. One single observation can invalidate a general statement derived from millennia of confirmatory sightings of millions of white swans. It illustrates a severe limitation to our learning from observations or experience and the fragility of our knowledge. ![]() The sighting of the first black swan might have been an interesting surprise for a few ornithologists (and others extremely concerned with the coloring of birds), but that is not where the significance of the story lies. Before the discovery of Australia, people in the old world were convinced that all swans were white, an unassailable belief as it seemed completely confirmed by empirical evidence. ![]()
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