Street Prophets

Coffee Hour: The Black Swan

by linkage

Mon Jun 07, 2010 at 01:22:43 PM PDT

The term black swan was a Latin expression — its oldest reference is in the poet Juvenal expression that "a good person is as rare as a black swan" ... from Wikipedia.

Author, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, used the Black Swan metaphor in the title of his book "The Black Swan." This is an interesting book, published in 2007, that some say predicted the economic meltdown of the last few years.

For today's Coffee Hour / Open Thread lets talk about improbable events.
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Photo from Wikipedia: A black swan, a member of the species, Cygnus atratus, which remained undocumented until the eighteenth century
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In today's Open Thread / Coffee Hour all topics of conversation are welcome.  What is for dinner? How are you doing? What is on your mind? If you are new to Street Prophets please join in the conversation in the comments below.

And, what improbable events have you experienced?

It was a common expression in 16th century London as a statement that describes impossibility, deriving from the old world presumption that 'all swans must be white', because all historical records of swans reported that they had white feathers. In that context, a black swan was something that was impossible, or near impossible and could not exist.

From Wikipedia, Black Swan Theory

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Identifying a Black Swan Event

Based on the author's criteria:

  1. The event is a surprise (to the observer).
  1. The event has a major impact.
  1. After the fact, the event is rationalized by hindsight, as if it  had been expected.

From Wikipedia, Black Swan Theory


Tags: Coffee Hour, Black Swan, Improbable (all tags)

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