A Black Swan, (a term popularized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book "The Black Swan"), is an event or occurrence that deviates beyond what is normally expected of a situation and that illustrates a severe limitation to our learning from observations or experience and the fragility of our knowledge.
The term “black swan” was common in sixteenth century London. Everyone knew swans were white, and black swans presumably did not exist, so the term came to mean something farfetched, not real. However, in 1697, a Dutch explorer discovered a bevy of black swans in Western Australia and suddenly black swans were no longer an impossibility and the meaning of the term changed from something farfetched to something once thought of as farfetched, but now known to be a reality.
Based on the Taleb's conclusions, a Black Swan Event has 3 criteria:
- The event is a surprise (to the observer).
- The event has a major effect.
- After the first recorded instance of the event, it is rationalized by hindsight, as if it could have been expected; that is, the relevant data were available but unaccounted for in risk mitigation programs. The same is true for the personal perception by individuals.
Taleb suggests that the '9/11 terrorist attacks' might therefore be viewed as a black swan event in that it was a surprising event, with had a major effect in that it has created a zeitgeist where it is now commonly believed, when viewed through the prism of hindsight, that the 9/11 attacks could have been anticipated and prevented. The result of this intellectual fallacy has been to generate a fixation on the 1% of the time that there is a security threat to the exclusion of the other 99% of the time when there is no threat. This reflects the aspect of the black swan theory which suggests that upon observing 100 swans it is now the new-normal to fixate on trying to spot one black swan (the black swan event) among all the white swans, in the conviction that a black swan must be there.
Conversely, Taleb also suggests that had an individual, on the day before "9/11", instituted a security policy that prevented the attack, the actions of that individual (a white swan) would have gone unnoticed by the masses, as there would have been no "black swan event" to capture their attention. Therefore, "the hero who prevented 9/11 and changed the course of history" would never have been recognized as having done so.
So, can we know what goes on in our own little pond while only paying attention to the extraordinary black swan and the ripples it leaves in its wake? Or, can we awaken to recognize the effects the unremarkable white swan's ripples have on our little pond as well?
