{"id":4198,"date":"2012-03-12T23:13:18","date_gmt":"2012-03-13T06:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/?p=4198"},"modified":"2012-03-12T23:13:18","modified_gmt":"2012-03-13T06:13:18","slug":"bbc-news-is-nassim-nicholas-taleb-downing-streets-favourite-adviser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/bbc-news-is-nassim-nicholas-taleb-downing-streets-favourite-adviser\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC News – Is Nassim Nicholas Taleb Downing Street’s favourite adviser?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is Black Swan theory?<\/strong><\/p>\n

“The problem of induction” – that any theory based on observations could be wrong – has long preoccupied philosophy.<\/p>\n

20th Century British philosopher Sir Karl Popper also considered how new observations affected knowledge – such as spotting a black swan when it was thought all swans were white.<\/p>\n

Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s 2007 book The Black Swan looks at the problem anew and describes the disproportionate role played by hard-to-predict events.<\/p>\n

Such ‘black swan events’ are considered extremely rare but have huge historical consequences.<\/p>\n

Examples include World War I, the September 11 attacks and the emergence of the internet.<\/p>\n

While these events are a surprise, they are then rationalised in hindsight – they could have been predicted as the evidence was there, but went ignored.<\/p>\n

The black swan reference derives from a Latin expression “rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno”<\/p>\n

This translates as “a rare bird in the lands, and very like a black swan” – when first written it was thought that black swans did not even exist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

via BBC News – Is Nassim Nicholas Taleb Downing Street’s favourite adviser?<\/a>.
\nHatTip to Dave Lull<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is Black Swan theory? “The problem of induction” – that any theory based on observations could be wrong – has long preoccupied philosophy. 20th Century British philosopher Sir Karl Popper also considered how new observations affected knowledge – such as spotting a black swan when it was thought all swans were white. Nassim Nicholas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[472],"class_list":["post-4198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contributors","tag-black-swan-theory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4198"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4199,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4198\/revisions\/4199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blackswanreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}