The Black Swan

Taleb’s venerable The Black Swan has captured the attention of many astute and experienced practitioners of probability, planning, and investing. More importantly, it’s a charming yet chilling reminder of how blind we as a society are to rare (though technically probable) events. By default, we simply are not prepared for unexpected deviations from the “everyday norm”, largely as a function of our wiring for homeostatis (understandly so). However, Taleb urges his readers to make themselves personally and professionally robust against “black swan” events by (full stop) not trying to predict them in the first place!