Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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 Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2007 10:34 pm Post subject: History and Black Swan Chance Theory |
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Are we in control of history or do we simply lurch from one random cataclysmic event to the next?
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According to Taleb's new book, The Black Swan, life is infused with unpredictability. Almost everything really significant that happens - in the grand sweep of history, or in our personal lives - is what he calls a black swan event. The label evokes an old philosophical observation: you might believe in the truth of the statement "all swans are white", but no matter how many white swans you see, you can never prove it for certain. On the other hand, a single, unexpected sighting of a black swan completely disproves it. Black swan events are shocking when they happen, and their impact is huge - but in retrospect, they seem predictable. The September 11 attacks were a black swan; so was the Virginia massacre. And black swans, Taleb argues, are getting worse: in our global, electronically connected world, randomness is magnified. Things spin more rapidly out of control, whether copycat killings, or sales of Harry Potter books.
We can't get much better at predicting. But we can get better at realising how bad we are at predicting. Taleb has the dubious honour of having inspired the former US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to make his speech about "unknown unknowns". (He had outlined his ideas to Rumsfeld's aides some time earlier.) "But I don't want to be advertised as someone who's too close to these people," Taleb sighs today.
Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns" speech made perfect sense. The problem, Taleb says, was that Rumsfeld himself didn't understand it. The black swan way of thinking should have prompted the defence secretary to be cautious about his capacity to predict the future in Iraq. Instead, he fell, again and again, into the prediction trap.
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