THE BLACK SWAN THEORY

When I was very young I saw a documentary about swans. Half way through the middle of the special there was the rare appearance of a Black Swan. It made me feel very special and I knew I was seeing something on film that was rare and beautiful. It wasn't until the narrator spoke about how they could and should destroy the Black Swan (the one Black Swan out of a field of hundreds of normal White Swans) to keep its genetic quality from spreading that I actually began to cry. A 10 year old crying about an implied social dynamic that he barely understood but knew was absolutely wrong.

Very upset I explained to my elementary school teacher what I had seen the night before and she tried to convince me that I had misheard the narrator. The following night she watched the show's encore presentation. The next day, she apologized to me (as if it were her fault???) and rationally explained that people sometimes don't understand what true beauty is? Ever since then I have held that moment close to me.

I do like that things have progressed since my youth. I even like how the Black Swan Theory has evolved from what was originally called The Black Swan Problem.

People have to realize that Nature/GOD/The Universe or whatever else you would like to call it DOES NOT MAKE MISTAKES! Judge for yourself but I suggest that you do so wisely.

N8

The Black Swan Theory or "Theory of Black Swan Events" was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain 1) the disproportionate role of high-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance and technology, 2) the non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to their very nature of small probabilities) and 3) the psychological biases that make people individually and collectively blind to uncertainty and unaware of the massive role of the rare event in historical affairs. Unlike the earlier philosophical "black swan problem", the "Black Swan Theory" (capitalized) refers only to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence and their dominant role in history. Such events, considered extreme outliers, collectively play vastly larger roles than regular occurrences.