Thursday, June 7, 2012

Unexpected: Black Swans


These days, I am reading the book The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The book is about uncertainty and why the so-called champions on the subject fail to explain the occurrence of the black swans i.e. events that occur out of the pattern like natural disasters, stock exchange failures and also many of the discoveries that have changed our  lives immensely. 

At one point, the author illustrates, through an example, how we react when the unexpected may happens to us. Many a couples get divorced every day, but even their wildest imaginations, they would not have considered that things in their relationship would get to such an extreme. It was all so well, they made one of the best couples. The loved each other so much. At such instants, one asks, how come this occurred to us, as if the all other couples in the world had considered that would happen one day. It's all so unexpected. We can't predict such things. However, one such things happen, we try to find reasons for them. We try to identify patterns and categorize things into classes of failures and success. That's how our brains are wired to establish links and concoct justifications. 

I will end this note here unexpectedly and let you think whether this is true. 




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