{"id":4600,"date":"2019-11-25T08:31:32","date_gmt":"2019-11-25T12:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=4600"},"modified":"2022-03-11T16:31:11","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T20:31:11","slug":"nassim-nicholas-taleb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/nassim-nicholas-taleb\/","title":{"rendered":"Origins of Nassim Nicholas Taleb&#8217;s Black Swan Obsession"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Who is Nassim Nicholas Taleb? How did he develop his popular &#8220;black swan&#8221; theory?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/black-swan-theory\/\">Black Swan<\/a><\/em> is the second book in former options trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb\u2019s five-volume series on uncertainty. This book analyzes so-called \u201cBlack Swans\u201d\u2014extremely unpredictable events that have massive impacts on human society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;ll explore how Nassim Nicholas Taleb became obsessed with probability (or, more accurately, improbability) and how he developed his theory of black swans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Nassim Nicholas Taleb &amp; Black Swans<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The Black Swan is named after a classic error of induction wherein an observer assumes that because all the swans he\u2019s seen are white, all swans <em>must <\/em>be white. Black Swans have three salient features:<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>They are rare (statistical outliers);<\/li><li>They are disproportionately impactful; and, because of that outsize impact,&nbsp;<\/li><li>They compel human beings to explain <em>why <\/em>they happened\u2014to show, after the fact, that they were indeed predictable.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Nassim Nicholas Taleb\u2019s thesis, however, is that <strong>Black Swans, by their very nature, are<em> always <\/em>unpredictable<\/strong>\u2014they are the \u201cunknown unknowns\u201d<em> <\/em>for which even our most comprehensive models can\u2019t account. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/importance-of-the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall\/\">fall of the Berlin Wall<\/a>, the 1987 stock market crash, the creation of the Internet, 9\/11, the 2008 financial crisis\u2014all are Black Swans.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once Nassim Nicholas Taleb introduces the concept of the Black Swan, he delves into human society and psychology, analyzing why modern civilization invites wild randomness and why humans can neither accept nor control that randomness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>The Origins of <\/strong>Nassim Nicholas Taleb<strong>\u2019s Black Swan Obsession<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Nassim Nicholas Taleb\u2019s first encounter with a Black Swan took place in his home country of Lebanon.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For centuries, the region around Mount Lebanon was known for its cosmopolitanism\u2014located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, at the crossroads of Europe and the Near East, it was home to a vibrant mercantile population that included Christians and Muslims of various sects, Jews, and Druze.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This tolerant and multicultural paradise was still in existence in Taleb\u2019s youth. He recalls the motley crew of international playboys, spies, writers, and merchants that frequented the country.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Taleb was part of the country\u2019s aristocracy. Both of his grandfathers were educated in France, and one of them was serving as minister of the interior when a teenaged Nassim Nicholas Taleb was jailed for participating in a political rally that turned violent. The government was scared enough of the unrest to grant all the arrested protesters amnesty.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Shortly after the rally came the Black Swan that launched Taleb\u2019s obsession: A civil war between Lebanon\u2019s Muslims and Christians that shattered the country\u2019s millennia-long ethnic peace and reduced Beirut, Lebanon\u2019s capital and the \u201cParis of the Middle East,\u201d to rubble.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What this Black Swan brought home for Nassim Nicholas Taleb was the blunt unknowability of history. <\/strong>The war wasn\u2019t\u2014couldn\u2019t have been\u2014predicted; it could only be explained after the fact. He realized that human beings suffer from a \u201ctriplet of opacity\u201d when it comes to our encounters with history:<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>1) The Illusion of Understanding<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>We all tend to <em>think <\/em>we have a grasp of what\u2019s going on in the world when, in fact, the world is far more complex than we know.<br><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, all the adults around Nassim Nicholas Taleb predicted the civil crisis would last a matter of days (it ended up lasting around 17 years). Despite the fact that events kept contradicting people\u2019s forecasts, people acted each day as though nothing exceptional had occurred.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>2) The Retrospective Distortion<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>History always appears predictable (or, at least, explainable) in our retrospective accounts of events.<br><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the case of the Lebanese Civil War, <strong>the adults whose forecasts were continually proved incorrect were always able to explain the surprising events <\/strong><strong><em>after the fact<\/em><\/strong>. In other words, the events always <em>were indeed<\/em> predictable, but one could only predict them <em>after they\u2019d already happened<\/em>.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>3) The Overvaluation of Facts and the Flaw of Expertise<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>We accumulate information and listen to expert analysis of that information, but these elements never measure up to real events.<br><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nassim Nicholas Taleb cites the example of his grandfather, who eventually rose to deputy prime minister of Lebanon. Although his grandfather was an educated man with years of experience in politics, his forecasts were proven wrong as routinely as those of his uneducated driver. <strong>Neither knew more than the other about the twists and turns of the war<\/strong>.<br><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Newspapers, too, did nothing to help the Lebanese understand the war. They communicated information, but they didn\u2019t make anyone\u2019s predictions any more accurate. The reporters of the war also tended to \u201ccluster\u201d\u2014emphasizing the same details and using the same categories as each other. Clustering reduces the complexity of the world\u2014and leaves us vulnerable to Black Swans.<br><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(When Nassim Nicholas Taleb was attending Wharton, he learned about \u201cefficient markets\u201d\u2014the idea that trading securities can\u2019t produce profits because all relevant information is publicly available and thus already built into prices. Upon absorbing this idea, Taleb completely ceased to read newspapers or watch television.)<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Nassim Nicholas Taleb in Finance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In the 1980s, as the war continued to rage, Nassim Nicholas Taleb found himself in business school at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Wharton School. There, he discovered that the triplet of opacity didn\u2019t just affect his countrymen\u2014it affected his professors and the powerful corporate executives who came to lecture as well. Taleb realized that <em>no one\u2014<\/em>not even the \u201csmartest\u201d businesspeople in the world\u2014was prepared for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/what-is-a-black-swan-event\/\">Black Swan events<\/a>.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That realization became even more stark on October 19, 1987, when global stock markets crashed.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the time, Nassim Nicholas Taleb was working for Credit Suisse First Boston; his specialty, honed at Wharton, was \u201cquantitative finance\u201d\u2014the application of complex mathematical models to markets to mitigate uncertainty. Taleb, however, used his knowledge as a \u201cquant\u201d not to apply those mathematical models directly, but to suss out <em>where those models failed <\/em>and invest accordingly. In other words, whereas everyone else was flying blind and didn\u2019t know it,<strong> <\/strong>Nassim Nicholas Taleb<strong> was flying blind and <em>did <\/em>know it<em>, <\/em>and he placed bets that would pay off if the models were wrong<\/strong>.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the day of the crash, he was vindicated. So much so that his bonus was tantamount to \u201cF*** you\u201d money\u2014that is, it was large enough that he no longer needed to work to earn money. He chose to stay in finance, but he customized his roles so that he could spend ample time in solitude and contemplation.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The focus of Nassim Nicholas Taleb&#8217;s sabbaticals? <em>Uncertainty<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who is Nassim Nicholas Taleb? How did he develop his popular &#8220;black swan&#8221; theory? The Black Swan is the second book in former options trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb\u2019s five-volume series on uncertainty. This book analyzes so-called \u201cBlack Swans\u201d\u2014extremely unpredictable events that have massive impacts on human society. We&#8217;ll explore how Nassim Nicholas Taleb became obsessed with probability (or, more accurately, improbability) and how he developed his theory of black swans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,21],"tags":[60],"class_list":["post-4600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people","category-philosophy","tag-black-swan","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Origins of Nassim Nicholas Taleb&#039;s Black Swan Obsession - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Black Swan is the second book in former options trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb\u2019s series on uncertainty. 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Learn how he developed his famous theory.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/nassim-nicholas-taleb\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-11-25T12:31:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-03-11T20:31:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/swan-nassim.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"922\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"517\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Amanda Penn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Amanda Penn\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/nassim-nicholas-taleb\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/nassim-nicholas-taleb\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Amanda Penn\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/01b0e4c9ddb993e51d03808839d538b0\"},\"headline\":\"Origins of Nassim Nicholas Taleb&#8217;s Black Swan Obsession\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-11-25T12:31:32+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-03-11T20:31:11+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/nassim-nicholas-taleb\/\"},\"wordCount\":1102,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/nassim-nicholas-taleb\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/swan-nassim.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"The Black Swan\"],\"articleSection\":[\"People\",\"Philosophy\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/nassim-nicholas-taleb\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/nassim-nicholas-taleb\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/nassim-nicholas-taleb\/\",\"name\":\"Origins of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Black Swan Obsession - Shortform Books\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/nassim-nicholas-taleb\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/nassim-nicholas-taleb\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/swan-nassim.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-11-25T12:31:32+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-03-11T20:31:11+00:00\",\"description\":\"The Black Swan is the second book in former options trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb\u2019s series on uncertainty. 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