Title: Black Swan. Under the sign of unpredictability (collection)
Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Year: 2010
Genre: Foreign educational literature, Foreign journalism, Sociology

About the book “Black Swan. Under the Sign of Unpredictability (collection)" Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The black swan is a rare bird. Just as rare and special are those severe catastrophes that could not be predicted or predicted. Lebanese Sorbonne graduate and excellent financier Nassim Taleb believes that most people are deeply mistaken in thinking that they can correctly analyze events and predict the future.

Although the term “black swan” has been used in philosophy for quite some time, it was Nassim Taleb who applied it to rare and unpredictable events that have global and societal significance. He calls such rare incidents of their kind “black swans” and believes that they push the development of history as a whole and the development of each individual person, so it is important to be able to prepare for them.

His peculiar “anti-theory” encountered a wave of criticism, but he skillfully confirmed his assertions in practice. After the publication of "Black Swan", his own company, during the global financial crisis, when competitors were collapsing, was able to bring its investors about a billion dollars. However, in his work “The Black Swan” you will not find ordinary economic theories; rather, these are very interesting reflections of an unusual person about life in general and how to find your place in it.

Nassim Taleb had a successful career on Wall Street before becoming interested in the epistemology of chance and focusing on his own mapping project. He began to study the problems of surviving in a world that we do not understand and dealing with the unknown and the random. He considers himself an "empirical skeptic", believing that all financial and economic specialists and scientists overestimate the capabilities of the usual, rational approach to explaining static data and do not notice the influence that inexplicable randomness has on statistics.

The merits of Nassim Taleb have been repeatedly noted by various experts. Thus, The Times magazine named Taleb the most outstanding modern thinker in the world, and Daniel Kahneman (Nobel laureate) went even further, proposing to add his name to the list of the best representatives of the intelligentsia, because he boldly analyzed the way people try to understand unpredictable things. And these are not all the brilliant reviews of his works. Readers will find it interesting and useful to learn how the author questions our dependence on misconceptions when we use the causes of events to analyze, when history is actually “silent.” This silence is the missing energy in the historical system that the black swan produces.

The collection “Black Swan” includes Taleb’s best statements, which represent the quintessence of his unique ideas.

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Quotes from the book “Black Swan. Under the Sign of Unpredictability (collection)" Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The newest disease is to take the unobservable for the non-existent; But we are also infected with the worst craze - to mistake the unobservable for the unobservable in general.

If in the morning you know with any degree of accuracy how your day will turn out, then you are a little bit dead, and the more accurate your knowledge, the deader you are.

Pharmaceutical companies are better at inventing diseases that fit existing drugs than inventing drugs that fit existing diseases.

Education makes a wise man only a little wiser, but a fool immeasurably more dangerous.

The only objective definition of old age: it begins when a person begins to talk about old age.

Illustration by Kolibri publishing house

Very briefly, the advice of a famous economist-analyst teaches how to achieve success without relying on luck and intuition, to calculate options and take into account events and risks that seem impossible.

“Black swans” are events that seem to be impossible, but happen

Human talent is to transform all environmental signals into meaningful information. This made it possible to create the scientific method, philosophize about the nature of existence, and invent complex mathematical models.

Our ability to think about and manipulate the world does not mean that we are good at it. We tend to think narrowly in our ideas about it. Having come to any judgment, we cling to it with a death grip.

Human knowledge is constantly increasing, and such a dogmatic approach is not effective. Two hundred years ago, doctors and scientists were absolutely confident in their knowledge of medicine, but just imagine that, having gone to the doctor with complaints of a runny nose, you were given a prescription for leeches!

Confidence in judgments forces us to take concepts beyond the framework of the system of concepts that we accept as true. How to understand medicine without knowing about the existence of microbes? You can come up with a reasonable explanation for the disease, but it will be flawed due to the lack of important information.

This kind of thinking can lead to unexpected surprises. Sometimes events surprise not because they are random, but because our worldview is too narrow. Such surprises are called “black swans” and can force us to reconsider our picture of the world.

Before man first saw a black swan, everyone assumed that they only came in white. White color was considered their integral part. Seeing a black swan, people radically changed their understanding of this bird. Black swans are as common as white swans and as fatal as going bankrupt due to a stock market crash.

"Black swans" can have life-changing consequences for those who are blind to them

The black swan effect is not the same for everyone. Some may be seriously harmed by it, while others may not even notice it. Access to relevant information is important: the less you know, the greater the risk of becoming a victim of a “black swan”.

Example. Imagine that at a race you bet on your favorite horse named Rocket. Because of the horse's physique, his track record, the skill of the jockey and the lackluster competition, you're betting all your money on him to win. Now imagine your surprise when Rocket not only did not run after the launch, but chose to simply lie down. This is a "black swan". Given the information available, Rocket should have won, but somehow you lost all the money. On the contrary, the owner of the Rocket became rich by betting against it. Unlike you, he knew that Rocket would go on strike to protest animal cruelty. This knowledge saved him from the “black swan”.

The influence of “black swans” can affect not only individuals, but also entire societies. In such cases, a “black swan” can change the world, affecting, for example, philosophy, theology and physics.

Example. Copernicus suggested that the Earth was not the center of the Universe, and the consequences were enormous: the discovery called into question both the authority of the ruling Catholics and the Bible itself.

Subsequently, this “black swan” marked the beginning of a new European society.

It is very easy to confuse us even with basic logical errors.

People often make mistakes when making predictions based on what they know about the past. Believing that the future is a reflection of the past, we are mistaken, because many unknown factors go against our assumptions.

Example. Imagine you are a turkey on a farm. For many years, the farmer fed you, groomed you and cherished you. Looking at the past, there is no reason to expect change. Alas, on Thanksgiving Day you were beheaded, roasted and eaten.

When we make predictions based on the past, we make mistakes, and this leads to serious consequences. A similar fallacy is the cognitive bias, where we look only for evidence of already existing beliefs.

We do not accept information that contradicts what we already believe, and are unlikely to conduct further research. But if we decide to look into it, we will look for sources that dispute this information.

Example. If you firmly believe that “climate change” is a conspiracy, and then see a documentary called “The Hard Evidence of Climate Change,” you are likely to be very upset. And if you search for information on the Internet, your search terms will include “climate change is a hoax” rather than “evidence for and against climate change.”

That is, we unwittingly draw the wrong conclusions: this is inherent in our nature.

Our brains group information in ways that make it difficult to make accurate predictions.

Over the course of evolution, the human brain has learned to categorize information in order to survive in the wild. But when we need to learn and quickly adapt to a dangerous environment, this method is completely useless.

Misclassification of information is called false narrative: a person creates linear descriptions of the current situation. Due to the huge amount of information we receive every day, our brain selects only what it considers important.

Example. You probably remember what you had for breakfast, but you are unlikely to name the color of the shoes of every passenger on the subway.

To give meaning to information, we connect it. So, when you think about your life, you mark certain events as significant and build them into a narrative that explains how you became who you are.

Example. You love music because your mother sang to you before bed.

This way you cannot fully understand the world. The process works only with an eye to the past and does not take into account the almost limitless interpretations of any event. Even tiny events can have unpredictable, significant consequences.

Example. A butterfly flapping its wings in India causes a hurricane in New York a month later.

If we arrange causes and effects in the order of their occurrence, we will see clear, cause-and-effect relationships between events. But since we only see the result - the hurricane - we can only guess which of the simultaneously occurring events actually influenced this outcome.

We find it difficult to distinguish between scalable and non-scalable information

We are not very good at distinguishing between types of information - “scalable” and “non-scalable”. The difference between them is fundamental.

Unscaled information such as weight or height has a statistical upper and lower limit. That is, body weight is not scalable, since there are physical limitations: it is impossible to weigh 4500 kg. Constraining the parameters of such unscaled information allows predictions to be made about average values.

But non-physical or fundamentally abstract things like wealth distribution or album sales are scalable.

Example. If you sell an album through iTunes, there is no limit to the number of sales: it is not limited by the volume of physical copies. And since transactions take place online, there is no shortage of physical currency, and nothing will stand in the way of selling trillions of albums.

The difference between scalable and non-scaleable information is critical to seeing an accurate picture of the world. If rules that are effective for non-scalable information are applied to scalable information, errors will occur.

Example. You want to measure the wealth of the population of England. The simplest way is to calculate wealth per capita by adding up income and dividing it by the number of citizens. However, wealth is scalable: a tiny percentage of the population can own an incredibly large percentage of wealth.

Per capita income data will not reflect the reality of your income distribution.

We are too confident in what we think we know.

Everyone wants to protect themselves from danger. One way is to assess and manage risks. That's why we buy insurance and try not to put all our eggs in one basket.

Most make every effort to assess risks as accurately as possible, so as not to miss an opportunity and at the same time not to do something that they might regret. To do this, you need to assess all the risks, and then the likelihood that these risks will materialize.

Example. Let's say you are going to buy insurance, but without spending extra money. Then it is necessary to assess the threat of illness or accident and make an informed decision.

Unfortunately, we are convinced that we know all the possible risks from which we must protect ourselves. This is the gaming fallacy: we tend to react to risk as if it were a game with a set of rules and probabilities that can be determined before it begins.

Viewing risk this way is very dangerous.

Example. Casinos want to make as much money as possible, so they have developed a security system and disqualify players who win too much and too often. But their approach is based on a gaming bug. The main threat to casinos is not lucky people or thieves, but kidnappers who take the casino owner’s child hostage, or an employee who fails to submit an income tax return to the Tax Service. Serious dangers for casinos are completely unpredictable.

It doesn't matter how hard we try. It is impossible to accurately predict any risk.

Why is it necessary to be aware of your ignorance?

By understanding that there is a lot you don't know, you can better assess risks.

Everyone knows the phrase: “Knowledge is power.” But when knowledge is limited, it is more beneficial to admit it.

By focusing only on what you know, you limit your perception of all possible outcomes of a given event, creating fertile ground for a “black swan” to occur.

Example. You want to buy shares of a company, but you know too little about the stock market. In this case, you will watch for a few declines and rises, but, in general, only pay attention to the fact that the trends are positive. Believing that the situation will continue, you spend all your money on stocks. The next day the market crashes and you lose everything you had.

If you studied the topic a little better, you would have seen the numerous ups and downs of the market throughout history. By focusing only on what we know, we expose ourselves to serious risks.

Admitting that you don't know something can significantly reduce your risk.

Example. Good poker players know that this principle is critical to success in the game. They understand that their opponents' cards may be better, but they also know that there is certain information that they do not know - such as their opponent's strategies and how determined they are to go all the way.

Recognizing the presence of unknown factors, players focus exclusively on their cards, better assessing possible risks.

The idea of ​​limitation will help us make the right choice

The best defense against cognitive pitfalls is to have a good understanding of forecasting tools, as well as their limitations. Although this will not save you from making a mistake, it will help reduce the number of unsuccessful decisions.

If you are aware that you are susceptible to a cognitive bias, it is much easier to understand that you are looking for information that confirms already existing statements. Or, knowing that people like to reduce everything to clear, cause-and-effect narratives, you will be inclined to seek additional information to better understand the “big picture.”

You need to know about your shortcomings.

Example. If you understand that there are always unforeseen risks, despite the prospects of an opportunity, you will be more careful about investing heavily in it.

It is not possible to overcome all randomness or our limitations in understanding the complexity of the world, but we can at least mitigate the damage caused by ignorance.

The most important

Although we make predictions all the time, we are bad at it. We are overconfident in our knowledge and underestimate our ignorance. The inability to understand and define randomness and even our very nature contribute to poor decision making and the emergence of “black swans”, that is, events that seem impossible and force us to rethink our understanding of the world.

Be distrustful of “because.” Instead of wanting to see events in a clear cause-and-effect relationship, consider a range of possibilities without fixating on one.

Realize that you don't know something. To make meaningful predictions about the future, be it buying insurance, investing, changing jobs, and so on, it is not enough to take into account everything you “know” - this gives only a partial understanding of the risks. Instead, admit that you don't know something so you don't unnecessarily limit the information you're dealing with.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Black Swan. Under the sign of unpredictability (collection)

Black Swan. Under the sign of unpredictability

Dedicated to Benoit Mandelbrot, a Greek among the Romans

Prologue. About bird plumage

Before the discovery of Australia, the inhabitants of the Old World were convinced that all swans were white. Their unshakable confidence was fully confirmed by experience. The sighting of the first black swan must have been a big surprise to ornithologists (and indeed anyone who is in any way sensitive to the color of a bird's feathers), but the story is important for another reason. It shows within what strict boundaries of observation or experience our learning occurs and how relative our knowledge is. A single observation can negate an axiom that has been developed over several millennia, when people admired only white swans. To refute it, one (and, they say, rather ugly) black bird was enough.

I go beyond this logical-philosophical question into the realm of empirical reality, which has interested me since childhood. What we will call a Black Swan (with a capital B) is an event that has the following three characteristics.

Firstly, it abnormal, because nothing in the past foreshadowed it. Secondly, it has enormous impact. Third, human nature forces us to come up with explanations for what happened after of how it happened, making an event initially perceived as a surprise understandable and predictable.

Let's stop and analyze this triad: exclusivity, impact and retrospective (but not forward) predictability. These rare Black Swans explain almost everything that happens in the world - from the success of ideas and religions to the dynamics of historical events and the details of our personal lives. Since we emerged from the Pleistocene - about ten thousand years ago - the role of Black Swans has increased significantly. Its growth was especially intense during the Industrial Revolution, when the world began to become more complex, and everyday life - the one we think about, talk about, which we try to plan based on the news we read from the newspapers - went off the beaten track.

Think how little your knowledge of the world would help you if, before the war of 1914, you suddenly wanted to imagine the further course of history. (Just don't fool yourself by remembering what your boring school teachers filled your head with.) For example, could you have foreseen Hitler's rise to power and a world war? And the rapid collapse of the Soviet bloc? And the outbreak of Muslim fundamentalism? What about the spread of the Internet? And what about the market crash in 1987 (and a completely unexpected revival)? Fashion, epidemics, habits, ideas, the emergence of artistic genres and schools - everything follows the “Black Swan” dynamics. Literally everything that has any significance.

The combination of low predictability and power of impact turns the Black Swan into a mystery, but that’s not what our book is about. It's mainly about our reluctance to admit that it exists! And I don’t mean just you, your cousin Joe and me, but almost all representatives of the so-called social sciences, which for more than a century have been flattering themselves with the false hope that their methods can measure uncertainty. Applying vague science to real world problems has a ridiculous effect. I have seen this happen in economics and finance. Ask your “portfolio manager” how he calculates risks. He will almost certainly call you exclusion criterion Black Swan probability - that is, one that can be used to predict risks with about the same success as astrology (we will see how intellectual fraud is dressed up in mathematical clothes). And so it is in all humanitarian spheres.

The main point this book makes is our blindness to randomness, especially on a large scale; Why do we, scientists and ignoramuses, geniuses and mediocrities, count pennies, but forget about millions? Why do we focus on the little things rather than the possible big events, despite their very obvious gigantic impact? And - if you have not yet missed the thread of my reasoning - why reading a newspaper reduces our knowledge of the world?

It is easy to understand that life is determined by the cumulative effect of a series of significant shocks. You can become aware of the role of Black Swans without leaving your chair (or bar stool). Here's a simple exercise for you. Take your own life. List significant events and technological improvements that have occurred since you were born, and compare them with how they were seen in the future. How many of them arrived on schedule? Look at your personal life, at the choice of profession or meetings with loved ones, at leaving your homeland, at the betrayals you had to face, at sudden enrichment or impoverishment. How often did these events go as planned?

What you don't know

Black Swan logic does what you don't know much more important than what you know. After all, if you think about it, many Black Swans came into the world and shook it precisely because no one was waiting for them.

Take the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001: if this kind of danger could foresee On September 10, nothing would have happened. Fighter planes would have been patrolling around the World Trade Center towers, interlocking bulletproof doors would have been installed on the planes, and the attack would not have taken place. Dot. Something else could have happened. What exactly? Don't know.

Isn't it strange that an event happens precisely because it should not have happened? How to protect yourself from this? If you know something (for example, that New York is an attractive target for terrorists) - your knowledge is invalidated if the enemy knows that you know it. It's strange that in a strategy game like this, what you know may not matter at all.

This applies to any activity. Take, for example, the “secret recipe” for phenomenal success in the restaurant business. If it were known and obvious, someone would have already invented it and it would have become something trivial. To get ahead of everyone, you need to come up with an idea that is unlikely to occur to the current generation of restaurateurs. It should be completely unexpected. The less predictable the success of such an enterprise, the fewer competitors it has and the greater the likely profit. The same applies to the shoe business or the book business - or, in fact, to any business. The same applies to scientific theories - no one is interested in listening to platitudes. The success of human endeavors, as a rule, is inversely proportional to the predictability of their results.

About the book

• Original title: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
• First edition: April 17, 2007
• Number of pages: 736
• Publishers: Azbuka-Atticus, KoLibri
• Editor: Marina Tyunkina
• Genre: Aphorisms and quotes
• Age restrictions: 16+

Unpredictable events are the engine of all humanity. Over the last decade alone, humanity has experienced a number of severe disasters, shocks and cataclysms that do not fit into the framework of the most fantastic predictions. 52-year-old financial guru Nassim Taleb tried to convey these thoughts to the reader. His creation is an invaluable milestone in shaping the consciousness of the ideal investor.

Nassim Taleb calls such unpredictable events Black Swans. He is convinced that it is they who give impetus to both history as a whole and the existence of each individual person. And to succeed, you need to be prepared for them.

The name “Black Swan” is by no means accidental. Have you seen black swans? Are you sure that such people do not exist and that it is impossible to meet them? All people were sure of this, until the discovery of the continent of Australia occurred; this event radically changed people’s worldview about the possible color of these birds. The author personifies with the “Black Swan” an event that simply should not have happened, but it does. It is anomalous, no one expects to encounter it, the event has enormous power and fate.

Immediately after the release of “Black Swan,” the author brilliantly demonstrated his “non-theory” in practice: against the backdrop of the financial crisis, Nassim Taleb’s company earned (not lost!) half a billion dollars for investors. But his work is not an economics textbook. These are the thoughts of a very extraordinary person about life and how to find your place in it. In a postscript essay he later wrote, “On the Secrets of Sustainability,” Taleb gives a witty rebuke to those orthodox economists who took the anti-teaching he created with hostility.

The first edition of the book appeared in 2007 and was a commercial success. The book spent 36 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. A second expanded edition appeared in 2010.

The book is part of Taleb's four-volume philosophical essay on uncertainty, entitled Incerto, and covers the following books: Antifragile (2012), The Black Swan (2007-2010), Fooled by Randomness (2001) and Procrustean Bed (2010) -2016).

The collection of Nassim Taleb's aphorisms included in the book is a brilliant quintessence of his original ideas.

Audiobook

Quotes from the book “Black Swan. Under the sign of unpredictability"

• The first main postulate: throws do not depend on each other. The coin has no memory. Just because you get heads or tails doesn't mean you'll have better luck next time. The ability to toss a coin does not come with time. If you introduce a parameter such as memory or throwing skill, this whole Gaussian structure will shake.
• Try not to call those who had no other choice heroes.
• Greatness begins with replacing hatred with polite contempt.
• The tragedy is that most of the phenomena that seem random to you are actually natural - and vice versa, which is even worse.
• When I ask someone to name the three modern technologies that have most changed the world, they usually tell me that they are the computer, the Internet and the laser. All these technical innovations appeared suddenly, unpredictably, were not appreciated at the time of discovery, and even when they began to be used, the attitude towards them remained skeptical for a long time. These were breakthroughs in science. These were Black Swans.
• Some thank you for what you gave them, while others blame you for what you did not give them.
• To evaluate a person, think about the difference between your impressions of your very first and most recent meeting with him.
• We find the most reasons to help those who need us least.
• Art is a one-way conversation with the invisible.
• That is, my advice to you: experiment as much as possible, trying to catch as many Black Swans as possible.
• It is customary to say: “He is wise who knows how to foresee the future.” No, he is truly wise who knows that the distant future is unknown to anyone.
• The success of human endeavors, as a rule, is inversely proportional to the predictability of their results.
• I will say more: scholarship without erudition leads to disaster.
• The three most dangerous addictions: heroin, carbohydrates, monthly salary.
• And the best basis for confidence is extreme politeness and friendliness, which allows you to manipulate people without offending them.
• I really hope that someday scientists and politicians will rediscover what our ancestors always knew: the most valuable thing in human culture is respect.
• The double curse of modern civilization: it forces us to grow old earlier and live longer.
• True love is the complete victory of the particular over the general, the unconditional over the conditional.
• Half of all the suckers in the world don’t understand: what you don’t love, someone else can love (even you yourself can love it later), and vice versa.
• Hate is much harder to fake than love. You've probably heard about fake love, but you've hardly heard about fake hatred.
• Everyone knows that prevention should be given more attention than therapy, but few give thanks for prevention.
• Books read are much less important than books not read.
• For those who predict the future, we are always suckers.
• The player who plays this game does not receive a material reward, he has another currency - hope.
• George Soros, before making a bet, collects data that could disprove his original theory.
• To predict the future, it is necessary to take into account the innovations that will appear there.
• We attribute our successes to our skill and our failures to external events beyond our control. Namely, accidents. We take responsibility for the good, but not for the bad. This allows us to think that we are better than others - no matter what we do.
• An idea begins to seem interesting as soon as you begin to be afraid to carry it to its logical conclusion.
• When a person says, “I'm not that stupid,” it usually means that he is much stupider than he thinks.
• However, the fact remains that you can judge what is wrong, but not what is right. Not all information is equal.
• It takes a lot of intelligence and confidence to admit that what is needed is not really needed.
• The only measure of success for me is how much time you have to kill.
• Karl Marx, a famous dreamer, found that a slave can be controlled much better if he is convinced that he is a hired worker.
• Extinction begins with the replacement of dreams with memories and ends when some memories are replaced by others.
• “Wealth” is a meaningless term, without an absolute and rigid criterion for its measurement; it is better to use the difference value “lack of wealth”: this is the difference between what you have and what you would like to have (at a given point in time)

Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Black Swan. Under the sign of unpredictability (collection)

Black Swan. Under the sign of unpredictability

Dedicated to Benoit Mandelbrot, a Greek among the Romans

Prologue. About bird plumage

Before the discovery of Australia, the inhabitants of the Old World were convinced that all swans were white. Their unshakable confidence was fully confirmed by experience. The sighting of the first black swan must have been a big surprise to ornithologists (and indeed anyone who is in any way sensitive to the color of a bird's feathers), but the story is important for another reason. It shows within what strict boundaries of observation or experience our learning occurs and how relative our knowledge is. A single observation can negate an axiom that has been developed over several millennia, when people admired only white swans. To refute it, one (and, they say, rather ugly) black bird was enough 1
The proliferation of cell phone cameras has led to readers sending me images of black swans in large quantities. Last Christmas I also received a case of Black Swan wine (so-so), a video (I don't watch videos), and two books. Pictures are better. (Hereinafter, except where otherwise noted, – approx. author.)

I go beyond this logical-philosophical question into the realm of empirical reality, which has interested me since childhood. What we will call a Black Swan (with a capital B) is an event that has the following three characteristics.

Firstly, it abnormal, because nothing in the past foreshadowed it. Secondly, it has enormous impact. Third, human nature forces us to come up with explanations for what happened after of how it happened, making an event initially perceived as a surprise understandable and predictable.

Let's stop and analyze this triad: exclusivity, impact and retrospective (but not forward) predictability 2
Expected no event- also a Black Swan. Please note that according to the laws of symmetry, an extremely improbable event is the equivalent of the absence of an extremely probable event.

These rare Black Swans explain almost everything that happens in the world - from the success of ideas and religions to the dynamics of historical events and the details of our personal lives.

Since we emerged from the Pleistocene - about ten thousand years ago - the role of Black Swans has increased significantly. Its growth was especially intense during the Industrial Revolution, when the world began to become more complex, and everyday life - the one we think about, talk about, which we try to plan based on the news we read from the newspapers - went off the beaten path.

Think how little your knowledge of the world would help you if, before the war of 1914, you suddenly wanted to imagine the further course of history. (Just don't fool yourself by remembering what your boring school teachers filled your head with.) For example, could you have foreseen Hitler's rise to power and a world war? And the rapid collapse of the Soviet bloc? And the outbreak of Muslim fundamentalism? What about the spread of the Internet? And what about the market crash in 1987 (and a completely unexpected revival)? Fashion, epidemics, habits, ideas, the emergence of artistic genres and schools - everything follows the “Black Swan” dynamics. Literally everything that has any significance.

The combination of low predictability and power of impact turns the Black Swan into a mystery, but that’s not what our book is about. It's mainly about our reluctance to admit that it exists! And I don’t mean just you, your cousin Joe and me, but almost all representatives of the so-called social sciences, which for more than a century have been flattering themselves with the false hope that their methods can measure uncertainty. Applying vague science to real world problems has a ridiculous effect. I have seen this happen in economics and finance. Ask your “portfolio manager” how he calculates risks. He will almost certainly call you exclusion criterion Black Swan probability - that is, one that can be used to predict risks with about the same success as astrology (we will see how intellectual fraud is dressed up in mathematical clothes). And so it is in all humanitarian spheres.

The main point this book makes is our blindness to randomness, especially on a large scale; Why do we, scientists and ignoramuses, geniuses and mediocrities, count pennies, but forget about millions? Why do we focus on the little things rather than the possible big events, despite their very obvious gigantic impact? And - if you have not yet missed the thread of my reasoning - why reading a newspaper reduces our knowledge of the world?

It is easy to understand that life is determined by the cumulative effect of a series of significant shocks. You can become aware of the role of Black Swans without leaving your chair (or bar stool). Here's a simple exercise for you. Take your own life. List significant events and technological improvements that have occurred since you were born, and compare them with how they were seen in the future. How many of them arrived on schedule? Look at your personal life, at the choice of profession or meetings with loved ones, at leaving your homeland, at the betrayals you had to face, at sudden enrichment or impoverishment. How often did these events go as planned?

What you don't know

Black Swan logic does what you don't know much more important than what you know. After all, if you think about it, many Black Swans came into the world and shook it precisely because no one was waiting for them.

Take the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001: if this kind of danger could foresee On September 10, nothing would have happened. Fighter planes would have been patrolling around the World Trade Center towers, interlocking bulletproof doors would have been installed on the planes, and the attack would not have taken place. Dot. Something else could have happened. What exactly? Don't know.

Isn't it strange that an event happens precisely because it should not have happened? How to protect yourself from this? If you know something (for example, that New York is an attractive target for terrorists) - your knowledge is invalidated if the enemy knows that you know it. It's strange that in a strategy game like this, what you know may not matter at all.

This applies to any activity. Take, for example, the “secret recipe” for phenomenal success in the restaurant business. If it were known and obvious, someone would have already invented it and it would have become something trivial. To get ahead of everyone, you need to come up with an idea that is unlikely to occur to the current generation of restaurateurs. It should be completely unexpected. The less predictable the success of such an enterprise, the fewer competitors it has and the greater the likely profit. The same applies to the shoe business or the book business - or, in fact, to any business. The same applies to scientific theories - no one is interested in listening to platitudes. The success of human endeavors, as a rule, is inversely proportional to the predictability of their results.

Remember the 2004 Pacific tsunami. If it had been expected, it would not have caused such damage. The affected areas would have been evacuated and an early warning system would have been activated. Forewarned is forearmed.

Experts and “empty suits”

Failure to predict anomalies leads to failure to predict the course of history, if we take into account the share of anomalies in the dynamics of events.

But we behave as if we can predict historical events, or even worse, as if we can change the course of history. We forecast budget deficits and oil prices thirty years out, not realizing that we cannot know what they will be next summer. The cumulative errors in political and economic forecasts are so enormous that when I look at the list of them, I want to pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming. What is surprising is not the scale of our incorrect forecasts, but the fact that we are unaware of it. This is especially troubling when we get involved in deadly conflicts: wars are unpredictable by their very nature (and we don't know that). Because of this lack of understanding of the cause-and-effect relationship between provocation and action, we can easily provoke the appearance of a Black Swan with our aggressive ignorance - like a child playing with a set of chemical reagents.

Our inability to forecast in an environment infested with Black Swans, coupled with a general lack of understanding of this state of affairs, means that some professionals who consider themselves experts, in fact, are not. If you look at their track record, it becomes clear that they understand their field no better than the person on the street, only they are much better at talking about it or - more dangerously - clouding our brains with mathematical models. They also mostly wear a tie.

Because Black Swans are unpredictable, we should adapt to their existence (instead of naively trying to predict them). We can achieve a lot if we focus on anti-knowledge, that is, on what we don’t know. Among other things, you can tune in to catching happy Black Swans (those that give a positive effect), if possible, going towards them. In some fields - such as scientific research or venture capital investing - betting on the unknown is extremely profitable because, as a rule, when you lose, the losses are small, but when you win, the profits are huge. We will see that, contrary to the claims of social scientists, almost all important discoveries and technological inventions were not the result of strategic planning - they were just Black Swans. Scientists and businessmen should rely as little as possible on planning and improvise as much as possible, trying not to miss the opportunity. I disagree with the followers of Marx and Adam Smith: the free market works because it allows a person to “catch” luck through gambling trial and error, and not to receive it as a reward for diligence and skill. That is, my advice to you: experiment as much as possible, trying to catch as many Black Swans as possible.

Learning to learn

On the other hand, what hinders us is that we are too focused on what is known, we tend to study details rather than the big picture.

What lesson have people learned from 9/11? Did they understand that there are events that, by the force of their internal dynamics, are pushed beyond the limits of the predictable? No. Have they realized that traditional knowledge is fundamentally flawed? No. What have they learned? They follow a strict rule: stay away from potential Muslim terrorists and tall buildings. I am often reminded that it is important to take practical steps rather than “theorize” about the nature of knowledge. The story of the Maginot Line well illustrates the correctness of our theory. After World War I, the French built a wall of fortifications along the German front line to prevent another invasion; Hitler went around it without difficulty. The French turned out to be too diligent students of history. Concerned about their own safety, they went too far with specific measures.

Teaching what we don't learn what we don't learn, doesn't happen by itself. The problem is in the structure of our consciousness: we do not comprehend the rules, we comprehend the facts, and only the facts. Metarules (for example, the rule that we tend not to comprehend rules) are poorly learned by us. We despise the abstract, and we despise it passionately.

Why? It is necessary here - since this is the main goal of my entire book - to turn traditional logic on its head and demonstrate how inapplicable it is to our current, complex and increasingly recursive 3
Under recursiveness What I mean here is that in our world there are more and more reaction springs that cause events to cause other events (for example, people buy a book, because other people bought it), causing a snowball effect and giving a random and unpredictable result that gives everything to the winner. We live in an environment where information spreads too quickly, increasing the scope of such epidemics. By the same logic, events can happen because they shouldn't happen. (Our intuition is tuned to an environment with simpler cause-and-effect relationships and slower transmission of information.) This kind of accident was rare in the Pleistocene era, since the structure of socio-economic life was primitive.

Wednesday.

But here's a more serious question: what are our brains for? It feels like we were given the wrong instruction manual. Our brains don't seem designed to think and analyze. If they were programmed for this, we would not have such a hard time in our century. Or rather, we would all simply have died out by now, and I certainly wouldn’t be talking about anything right now: my impractical, introspective, brooding ancestor would have been eaten by a lion, while his narrow-minded but quick-reacting relative was carried away legs. The thought process takes a lot of time and a lot of energy. Our ancestors spent more than a hundred million years in an unconscious animal state, and during the short period when we used our brains, we occupied them with such unimportant things that they were of little use. Experience shows that we do not think as much as we think - of course, except when we think about it.

A new kind of ingratitude

It's always sad to think about people who have been treated unfairly by history. Take, for example, “damned poets” like Edgar Allan Poe or Arthur Rimbaud: during their lifetime, society shunned them, and then they were turned into icons and their poems began to be forcibly shoved into unfortunate schoolchildren. (There are even schools named after poor students.) Unfortunately, recognition has come at a time when it does not give the poet either joy or the attention of ladies. But there are heroes whom fate has treated even more unfairly - these are those unfortunate people whose heroism we have no idea about, although they saved our lives or prevented a catastrophe. They left no traces, and they themselves did not know what their merit was. We remember the martyrs who died for some famous cause, but we do not know about those who fought an unknown struggle - most often precisely because they achieved success. Our ingratitude towards the “damned poets” is nothing compared to this black ingratitude. She makes our unnoticed hero feel worthless. I will illustrate this point with a thought experiment.

Imagine that a legislator with courage, influence, intelligence, vision and tenacity manages to pass a law that comes into force and is implemented without question on September 10, 2001; By law, every pilot's cabin must be equipped with a securely locked, bulletproof door (the airlines, already struggling to make ends meet, fought back desperately but were defeated). The law is being introduced in case terrorists decide to use planes to attack the World Trade Center in New York. I understand that my fantasy is bordering on delirium, but this is just a thought experiment (I also realize that legislators with courage, intelligence, foresight and tenacity most likely do not exist; I repeat, the experiment is a thought experiment). The law is unpopular with airline employees because it makes their lives more difficult. But he certainly would have prevented September 11th.

The man who introduced mandatory locks on cockpit doors will not be honored with a bust in the city square, and even his obituary will not write: “Joe Smith, who prevented the disaster of September 11, died of cirrhosis of the liver.” Since the measure apparently turned out to be completely unnecessary, and a lot of money was spent, voters, with the strong support of the pilots, will probably remove him from office. Vox clamantis in deserto 4
The voice of one crying in the wilderness (Isa. 40).

He will resign, become depressed, and consider himself a failure. He will die in full confidence that he has done nothing useful in his life. I would definitely go to his funeral, but, reader, I can't find him! But recognition can have such a beneficial effect! Believe me, even someone who sincerely claims that he doesn’t care about recognition, that he separates work from the fruits of labor, even he reacts to praise with a release of serotonin. You see what a reward is destined for our unnoticed hero - even his own hormonal system will not pamper him.

Let's think again about the events of September 11th. When the smoke cleared, whose good deeds were thanked? Those people you saw on TV - those who committed heroic deeds, and those who before your eyes tried to pretend that they were doing heroic deeds. The second category includes figures like the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, Richard Grasso, who “saved the stock exchange” and received a colossal bonus for his services (equal to several thousands average salaries). To do this, all he had to do was ring the bell in front of the television cameras, announcing the start of trading (television, as we will see, is a carrier of injustice and one of the most important reasons for our blindness to everything related to Black Swans).

Who gets the reward – the head of the Central Bank who prevented a recession, or the one who “corrects” the mistakes of his predecessor by being in his place during the economic recovery? Who is ranked higher - the politician who manages to avoid war, or the one who starts it (and is lucky enough to win)?

This is the same twisted logic that we have already seen when discussing the value of the unknown. Everyone knows that prevention should be given more attention than therapy, but few give thanks for prevention. We extol those whose names appear on the pages of history books - at the expense of those whose achievements have passed historians by. We humans are not only extremely superficial (this could still be corrected somehow) - we are very unfair.

Life is so strange

This book is about uncertainty, that is, its author poses equal sign between uncertainty and an out-of-the-ordinary event. It may seem like overkill to say that we must study rare and extreme events to understand ordinary ones, but I'm willing to explain myself. There are two possible approaches to any phenomenon. The first is to exclude the extraordinary and concentrate on the normal. The researcher ignores anomalies and deals with ordinary cases. The second approach is to think that to understand a phenomenon we must look at extreme cases; especially if, like Black Swans, they have a huge cumulative impact.

I'm not very interested in the “ordinary”. If you want to get an idea of ​​your friend's temperament, moral principles and breeding, you must see him in exceptional circumstances, and not in the rosy light of everyday life. Can you assess the danger a criminal poses by observing his behavior over a period of time? ordinary day? Can we understand what health is by turning a blind eye to terrible diseases and epidemics? The norm is often not important at all.

Almost everything in social life results from rare but related shocks and jumps, and yet almost all sociologists study the “norm”, basing their conclusions on bell curves 5
The normal distribution curve, or “Gaussian curve,” which is the basis of all statistics, is a bell-shaped curve whose maximum occurs at the average value. It is based on measuring average values ​​and deviations from them. (Approx. Transl.)

Which don't say much. Why? Because no bell curve reflects - fails to reflect - significant deviations, but at the same time gives us false confidence in the victory over uncertainty. In this book it will appear under the nickname GIO - the Great Intellectual Deception.

Plato and the “nerds”

The main impetus for the Jewish revolt in the 1st century AD was the Roman demand for a statue of Emperor Caligula in the Jerusalem Temple in exchange for the installation of a statue of the Jewish god Yahweh in Roman temples. The Romans did not understand what the Jews (and later Levantine monotheists) meant by god something abstract, all-encompassing, having nothing in common with the anthropomorphic, all-too-human image that arose in the minds of the Romans when they uttered the word deus. The most important point: the Jewish god did not fit into the framework of a specific symbol. In the same way, for me, what is usually labeled “unknown”, “incredible” or “uncertain” is something fundamentally different. This is by no means a specific and precise category of knowledge, not a territory mastered by “nerds,” but its complete opposite - the absence (and extremeness) of knowledge. This is the antithesis of knowledge. Let's unlearn the use of terms related to knowledge to describe a phenomenon that is polar to it.

Platonism- after the philosophy (and personality) of Plato - I call our tendency to mistake a map for a terrain, to concentrate on clear and clearly delineated “forms”, be they objects like triangles or social concepts like utopias (societies built according to the idea of ​​a certain “ rationality”) or even nationalities. When such ideas and orderly constructions are imprinted on our minds, they eclipse for us less elegant objects with a more amorphous and more indefinite structure (I will return to this idea many times throughout the book).

Platonism makes us think we understand more than we actually do. However, I do not claim that Platonic forms do not exist at all. Models and constructs—intellectual maps of reality—are not always wrong; They just don’t apply to everything. The problem is that a) you don't know in advance (only after the fact), for what the map is not applicable, and b) mistakes are fraught with serious consequences. These models are akin to drugs that cause rare but extremely severe side effects.

Platonic fold is the explosive edge where the Platonic way of thinking comes into contact with chaotic reality and where the gap between what you know and what you know supposedly known, becomes alarmingly obvious. This is where the Black Swan is born.