What is a Black Swan?

by Shane Parrish on October 10, 2011

In The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Taleb defined a black swan as

“an event with the following three attributes. First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact…. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.”

Still curious? Nassim Taleb is the author of The Black SwanFooled By Randomness, The Bed of Procrustes, and most recently Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder..