The Black Swan theory was coined and popularized by Nassim Taleb in his 2007 book, The Black Swan. The book has been called one of the most influential books written since World War 2.
Black Swan events are those which are rare, unpredictable and often cited as being obvious in hindsight.
Black Swan events have a low probability of occurring and have a huge impact on the world, leaving behind a significant change in the course of human civilization.
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There is a tendency to term any big impact event as a Black Swan, however, true Black Swan events are incredibly rare and cannot be predicted at all. In recent history, these events are often associated with financial disasters.
These events may be positive or negative, though the term Black Swan more commonly refers to negative events with disastrous consequences.
So it seems to be entirely obvious that the coronavirus pandemic would be on this list. But is it a Black Swan?
Watch this video of Black Swan events that changed the history of the world to find out.
Conclusion:
So here we see that for a significant event to be a true Black Swan event, it must be uncommon, unexpected and unpredictable.
It’s common for people to throw around this phrase for every big event, but it is essential to not cheapen the power of emphasis that the tag of Black Swan provides by overusing it to mean any negative occurrence.
In the era of the coronavirus pandemic, it is easy to brand any remotely interesting event as life-changing, but we must recognize that a lot of our current problems were already anticipated by experts and we were simply ill-prepared due to our indifference to warnings.
Black Swan events teach us to expect the unexpected and studying them would help us gain valuable lessons for the future.
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: The New Yorker, The Week, Economic Times
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This post is tagged under: black swan events, worldwide, big major events, which changed the world order, which changed things, which changed the world, which changed human civilisation, very big world events, negative, impact, blunders, uncommon, unexpected, unpredicted events, rare events with major consequences, devastating consequences
