In “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable,” author Nassim Nicholas Taleb contends that our belief in the predictability of events, based on what’s happened in the past, is so ingrained that we either overlook or can’t conceive of the fact that genuinely important events can’t always be predicted.

If, for example, as a life experience, you encounter one white swan, 10 white swans or 1,000 white swans, this does not in and of itself prove that all swans are white. But if in the course of encountering all these white swans, you come across one black swan, this definitely proves that not all swans are white. Read more →