Black swan theory
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In Nassim Nicholas Taleb's definition, a black swan is a large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations. Much of scientific discoveries for him are black swans --"undirected" and unpredicted. The event most commonly considered a black swan is the September 11, 2001 attacks. This term refers to the unexpected nature and unpredictability of the sudden observance of black swans that coincided with the discovery of Australia. Previously, the commonly held belief was that all swans were white in color. [1]
[edit] The high impact of the unexpected
Before Taleb, those who dealt with the notion of improbable like Hume, Mill or Popper focused on a problem in logic, in the limits of making general statements from specific observations. Taleb's Black Swan has a central and unique attribute: The high impact. His claim is that almost all consequential events in history come from the high impact events - while humans convince themselves that these events are explainable in hindsight.
