5 ms·
To be a little pedantic, this isn't really how I would summarize Taleb. His main idea is that Black Swan events are extremely important because of their outsize
by mjirv 6y ago
To be a little pedantic, this isn't really how I would summarize Taleb. His main idea is that Black Swan events are extremely important because of their outsized impacts, not because they are more frequent than people think.
- downshun 6y agoWell if you define a black swan event as important then, sure, it's bound to be important. "Black swan defining characteristics: First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations(...). Second, it carries an extreme 'impact'. Third (...) we concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable."
- woodandsteel 6y agoNo, the conventional belief is that only a very small proportion of extremely rare events have a major impact, as measured by standard criteria of the importance of impact. Taleb is arguing that a much larger proportion them do.
- downshun 6y agoIf asked to plot the exact distribution of events in the (rarity, impact) vector space then I'm bound to getting it inaccurate more than not.
- WheelsAtLarge 6y agoNope, one of his points, he has more than one, IS that Black Swans are more common than people can compute. Black Swans are unexpected outsized events that have a great impact, as he defines them.