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> I’d like to ask you guys whether we are prepared for other black swans. Let’s start with a collapse of the electrical system due to solar flares or electromag

> I’d like to ask you guys whether we are prepared for other black swans. Let’s start with a collapse of the electrical system due to solar flares or electromagnetic pulse attacks. A Black Swan is a "high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare event that is beyond the realm of normal expectations". But we know that the Carrington Event happened in 1859, and that it's only a matter of time before a big solar flare will affect Earth in the same way. So this is not a Black Swan. But yes, we should prepare for foreseeable rare events.

kiba 7y ago
A Black Swan is probably more about the POV of an actor as opposed to somebody who knows this, then it's not a black swan.
beambot 7y ago
Events like the Carrington & Covid seem to fit: high profile, hard to predict and rare. IMO, both qualify as Black swan. At some point, you have to pick a threshold on the probabilities involved... These events are likely independent & identically distributed (i.e. hard to predict for any year), and I'd call sub-1% annual chance pretty rare. But I'm receptive to a different threshold... But you can't just say "Black swan only counts for previously-inconceivable events". Edit: I'm assuming covid-19 is structurally different than Sars, mers, Ebola, & H1N1 purely based on the global effect it has had to date. If you found those others as pandemics (not according to WHO though), then you can remove it as Black swan.
- AQuantized 7y ago
  I think they are both categorically grey swans. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/grey-swan.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/grey-swan.asp COVID-19 especially because of the previous impact of Spanish Flu.
- Izkata 7y ago
  > These events are likely independent & identically distributed (i.e. hard to predict for any year), and I'd call sub-1% annual chance pretty rare. Put another way, it seems reasonable to me that "no one alive has experienced it before (and probably not their parents either)" is a decent threshold.
- roywiggins 7y ago
  Not to be all Word of God, but Nassim Taleb does not consider COVID19 a black swan at all. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-pandemic-isnt-a-black-swan-but-a-portent-of-a-more-fragile-global-system https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-pandemic-is... It's not a black swan because everyone with half a brain could say that there would eventually be a global pandemic respiratory disease. H1N1 was technically one, it just happened to be mild. We thought there was going to be one in 1976 and raced to vaccinate everyone against it. These things happen, like earthquakes. Nobody knows when, but if the San Andreas went tomorrow it wouldn't be a black swan.
  - steve19 7y ago
    Are any black swans going to be black swans in hindsight? Did anyone anticipate it enough to put their money where their mouth was? A fortune, and a major service to humanity, could have been made by a private individuals stockpiling PPE in vast quantities. You say anyone with half a brain anticipated it. I didn't. Did you buy 500k N95 masks and put them in a warehouse? Knowing someone will happen is easy. I know for sure that a large meatorite will hit the earth and cause mass deaths and crop failure, but I have no idea in how many 100s, 1000s or millions of year it will happen. If it happens tomorrow it would be a black Swan * * an example only, we would get plenty of advanced warning.
    - roywiggins 7y ago
      The first one that comes to mind is the arrival of the Conquistadors, from the point of view of the locals. Even in retrospect, could they have any reason to believe it was possible? Well, not really, no. Invasion generally, maybe, but not from another hemisphere. It has to be something that's just not accounted for in your worldview, something you couldn't expect based on anything you know about. A meteorite wouldn't be a black swan for us, but I think it would be for a society that hadn't discovered them yet. A meteorite strike on London circa 1800 would have been a black swan, because at the time people (Europeans, anyway) thought that shooting stars were atmospheric phenomena. Large rocks falling from the sky just wasn't in their cosmology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoroid#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoroid#History
- thebean11 7y ago
  Isn't previously inconceivable events pretty much the definition from the book? Unknown unknowns vs known unknowns? For example, winning the jackpot on a slot machine is not a black swan, no matter how small the probability.

kiba 7y ago

A Black Swan is probably more about the POV of an actor as opposed to somebody who knows this, then it's not a black swan.

beambot 7y ago

Events like the Carrington & Covid seem to fit: high profile, hard to predict and rare. IMO, both qualify as Black swan. At some point, you have to pick a threshold on the probabilities involved... These events are likely independent & identically distributed (i.e. hard to predict for any year), and I'd call sub-1% annual chance pretty rare. But I'm receptive to a different threshold... But you can't just say "Black swan only counts for previously-inconceivable events". Edit: I'm assuming covid-19 is structurally different than Sars, mers, Ebola, & H1N1 purely based on the global effect it has had to date. If you found those others as pandemics (not according to WHO though), then you can remove it as Black swan.

AQuantized 7y ago
I think they are both categorically grey swans. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/grey-swan.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/grey-swan.asp COVID-19 especially because of the previous impact of Spanish Flu.
Izkata 7y ago
> These events are likely independent & identically distributed (i.e. hard to predict for any year), and I'd call sub-1% annual chance pretty rare. Put another way, it seems reasonable to me that "no one alive has experienced it before (and probably not their parents either)" is a decent threshold.
roywiggins 7y ago
Not to be all Word of God, but Nassim Taleb does not consider COVID19 a black swan at all. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-pandemic-isnt-a-black-swan-but-a-portent-of-a-more-fragile-global-system https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-pandemic-is... It's not a black swan because everyone with half a brain could say that there would eventually be a global pandemic respiratory disease. H1N1 was technically one, it just happened to be mild. We thought there was going to be one in 1976 and raced to vaccinate everyone against it. These things happen, like earthquakes. Nobody knows when, but if the San Andreas went tomorrow it wouldn't be a black swan.
- steve19 7y ago
  Are any black swans going to be black swans in hindsight? Did anyone anticipate it enough to put their money where their mouth was? A fortune, and a major service to humanity, could have been made by a private individuals stockpiling PPE in vast quantities. You say anyone with half a brain anticipated it. I didn't. Did you buy 500k N95 masks and put them in a warehouse? Knowing someone will happen is easy. I know for sure that a large meatorite will hit the earth and cause mass deaths and crop failure, but I have no idea in how many 100s, 1000s or millions of year it will happen. If it happens tomorrow it would be a black Swan * * an example only, we would get plenty of advanced warning.
  - roywiggins 7y ago
    The first one that comes to mind is the arrival of the Conquistadors, from the point of view of the locals. Even in retrospect, could they have any reason to believe it was possible? Well, not really, no. Invasion generally, maybe, but not from another hemisphere. It has to be something that's just not accounted for in your worldview, something you couldn't expect based on anything you know about. A meteorite wouldn't be a black swan for us, but I think it would be for a society that hadn't discovered them yet. A meteorite strike on London circa 1800 would have been a black swan, because at the time people (Europeans, anyway) thought that shooting stars were atmospheric phenomena. Large rocks falling from the sky just wasn't in their cosmology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoroid#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoroid#History
thebean11 7y ago
Isn't previously inconceivable events pretty much the definition from the book? Unknown unknowns vs known unknowns? For example, winning the jackpot on a slot machine is not a black swan, no matter how small the probability.