Talk:Black swan theory

message: This is ridiculous.  It is an attempt to pretend that this Taleb character invented the concept of the Black Swan fallacy.   He, or whoever wrote it for him, should be damned well ashamed of themselves for this pathetic behaviour.   I am going to delete the whole page unless someone sorts it out. Aredbeardeddwarf (talk) 20:16, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: You are conflating this with the Black swan problem, i.e., the problem of induction. And please use sections for comments. Limit-theorem (talk) 21:27, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

text: I agree. Giving all the credit to Taleb is ridiculous and I suspect whoever wrote this is either a friend or admirer of Taleb. Considering I've known of the Black Swan problem ever since I studied philosophy in the 1970's it can hardly be a metaphor that was created in 2001 as stated in this article. MadScientistX11 (talk) 04:49, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: The metaphor belongs to Juvenal. Hume is the problem of induction. The book as I recall has pages and  pages on Hume. I am not sure Hume ever mentioned "black swan" in any text but worth investigating and finding a reference. Limit-theorem (talk) 08:53, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Difference with [[black swan problem]] (problem of induction)

message: The title section gives a summary of Taleb's theory (ideas?) that doesn't seem to rest on any actual statements, and seems to make sloppy use of otherwise rigorous terms, more specifically:
:The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain:
::The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology.
:::* What is the "realm of normal expectations in history, [etc]"?
:::* "Disproportionate" with respect to what?
::The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities).
:::* What "nature of small probabilities" warrants their "non-computability"?
:::* Where did Taleb make this claim?
::The psychological biases that blind people, both individually and collectively, to uncertainty and to a rare event's massive role in historical affairs.
:::* Where did Taleb get to explain "psychological biases"?
:::* What is there to support the claim that this is a goal in his "theory"?
:::* Where did he make the statement that people are (generally) blinded to uncertainty?
:::* Where did he claim that rare events have a "massive role in historical affairs"?
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.247.118.230 (talk) 10:32, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Title section summary 

message: At the risk of enduring flames, I've re-started the criticism section with re-worked verbiage from a prior edit that was thrown out as not-notable. From where I sit, Taleb's work is right at the core of ongoing arguments (see quasi-empiricism in mathematics), yet it brings a newer, and interesting, viewpoint to the debate. That the earlier entry referenced Amazon is not grounds for dismissal. The exodus of some learned social scientists from the academic environment so that they can apply their theories in the modern milieu founded upon the 'web' (Amazon, Google, etc.), with its ever-growing support for experiments across time and space, is one example that Taleb's work is of importance to the discussion. Besides, the Ludic fallacy is real. Let's apply it to proof and model theoretic issues, too. jmswtlk 00:26, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed the earlier section for failing WP:CITE (re:Amazon reviews) and WP:OR. Although it fails both of these criteria, I've left your version in (tagged appropriately) because your point that the subject is a topic of much current debate and the section has much potential. Skomorokh incite 00:37, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Deleted. —Ashley Y 08:01, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Other views

message: I apologize if any of this sounds insulting, but this page does a poor job of describing what NNT outlined. It makes me question whether anyone working on this page actually read the book.
# Black Swans aren't hard to predict, they can not be predicted. Grey Swans are hard to predict (September 11). That's said in one of the other sections, directly contradicting the initial paragraph.
# The High Impact of the unexpected section should be completely rewritten. And corrected. Review the Ludic Fallacy page. Better yet, reread the book. 
# NNT describes theories as "like medicine: often useless, sometimes necessary, always self-serving, and on occasion lethal". Therefore creating a page called Black Swan Theory, seems to be an invitation for scorn from the man himself.--Herda050 09:33, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Did anyone here read the book? 

message: I wonder how far this is related to the Knightian uncertainty. Any suggestions?
BS theory is about extreme events. Indeed, many of these are hard to measure. Taleb talks much about our lack of knowledge which is partly about the unmeasurable. See also Unknown unknown whihc is also a term Taleb uses. Yechezkel Zilber (talk) 21:40, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Similar to Knightian uncertainty?

message: It is important to note that Taleb's BlackSwan is different from the "black swan" of philosophy. It has an impact.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.44.56.228 (talk) 18:42, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Taleb's Black Swan 

message: Did Taleb originate the black swan theory (as applied to high impact low probability events that cause paradigm shifts) or did somebody else? I was under the impression that his book was not the first one to come up with this theory (since it is a core concept of risk management).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cowbert (talk • contribs) 15:51, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The theory was originated by David Hume. This Taleb person obviously stole this idea from Hume and now promoting himself and his book using this Wikipedia page. 78.167.0.28 (talk) 04:18, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Someone should edit this article. It is absurd to give the credit to Taleb rather than Hume. MadScientistX11 (talk) 04:51, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who originated this theory 

message: Could someone please rewrite this sentence so it's not hidden in a cloud of unanticipated poultry metaphor?
:A Black Swan surprise for the turkey is not going to be a Black Swan for the butcher—hence his idea is "to avoid being the turkey" by finding out where one may be exposed to be a turkey—and "turn Black Swans white".
I'd be grateful. 137.195.68.169 (talk) 16:17, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Turkey? What?

message: This idea is primarily an issue for active investors.  For the passive investor who holds their index portfolio for a risk-appropriate period of time, there are no black swans. 
When Eugene Fama was asked to comment on the Black Swan, he stated, "Half of my 1964 Ph.D. thesis is tests of market efficiency, and the other half is a detailed examination of the distribution of stock returns. Mandelbrot is right. The distribution is fat-tailed relative to the normal distribution. In other words, extreme returns occur much more often than would be expected if returns were normal.
There was lots of interest in this issue for about ten years. Then academics lost interest. The reason is that most of what we do in terms of portfolio theory and models of risk and expected return works for Mandelbrot's stable distribution class, as well as for the normal distribution (which is in fact a member of the stable class). For passive investors, none of this matters, beyond being aware that outlier returns are more common than would be expected if return distributions were normal.
For other applications, however, the difference can be critical. Risk management by financial institutions is a good example. For example, portfolio insurance, which was the rage in the early 1980s, bombed in the crash of October 1987, because this was an event that was inconceivable in their normality based return model. The normality assumption is also likely to be a serious problem in various kinds of derivatives, where lots of the price is due to the probability of extreme events. For example, news story accounts suggest that AIG blew up because its risk model for credit default swaps did not properly account for outlier events.    See Fama/French Forum.
As I noted in the External Links section, histograms of index portfolios over appropriate holding periods do not show black swan events.  See Simulated Passive Investor Experiences.
This is important data relative to Taleb's claims that investors should be concerned over such events.  Rare events like these balance out over time and are more likely to be positive than negative. The worst one month return for the S&P 500 occurred on 9/31 and was -29.74%, while the best one month return occurred on 4/33, and it was 42.55%.  See Eight One Years of Monthly Rolling Data, see S&P 500, page 21.
Mark Hebner 76.175.202.232 (talk) 02:31, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Mark Hebner you should not make edits to a wikipedia page on Fama's ideas when you sell products related to DIMENSIONAL FUND ADVISORS. You are violating the rules.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 57.69.1.178 (talk) 03:03, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Mark Hebner is an independent investment advisor, who receives no compensation from any products that he advises his clients to invest their assets. Therefore, he is not "selling" Dimensional Funds. He acts as a fiduciary for clients and therefore provides advice in their best interest and has a non-biased point of view that is highly valuable to wikipedia.  Mark Hebner 15:12, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Challenge to the concern over Black Swans 

message: this section was removed, and I do not understand why. the two fold problem is a good distinction. Yechezkel Zilber (talk) 21:12, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Then it should be back in text. It does correspond to the Black Swan (Taleb). NewEconomist (talk) 23:26, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  philosophical approach taht was deleted 

message: In the prefix of this article, it notes that Black Swan Theory should be capitalized as a specific concept.  Yet the article itself is simply Black swan theory.  Should the article be fully capitalized?  dimo414 (talk) 06:59, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  it will mess up various links. In which case, redirect pages has to be created. As for capitalization, I have no idea Yechezkel Zilber (talk) 20:31, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: It won't mess up anything as redirects are created automatically. -Koppapa (talk) 21:14, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Capitalization / Name Change 

message: If not more than one example can be found for a black swan event, this page should surely be removed.   —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.203.84.88 (talk) 13:50, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The whole meaning of "black swan event" is an event that is unique or so infrequent that in human experience it is perceived as being unique. Black swan theory deals with such events (plural). — Robert Greer (talk) 00:35, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Theory? 

message: The lone example currently given is not valid: 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.
John Kay said it was not a Black Swan:
:http://www.johnkay.com/2011/03/16/why-we-struggle-with-our-roulette-wheel-world 
Magnitude 9.0 earthquakes are not unprecedented: 
:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_Valdivia_earthquake
- Ac44ck (talk) 23:11, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: You're a troll. The earthquake in Japan has resulted in the Japanese government deciding to phase out nuclear power. If that is not a black swan event, then I don't know what is? Maybe if they built bigger walls, thicker reactors etc attitudes might have been different. But they didn't plan for a super tsunami - a 1:1000 year event - so this is the result.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.156.28.225 (talk) 13:55, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Precisely, you don't know what is. There is no black swan "theory" and you have clearly been fooled by rambling if you cannot (and I will not relent on this point) come up with a single example.    — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.203.84.88 (talk) 05:05, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

text: An excessive knee-jerk reaction to a single event at a nuclear power plant is not unprecedented. The Three Mile Island accident brought nuke building to a halt in the US. Hence, a similar reaction by the Japanese government is not a black swan event, it is a copy of a previous CYA campaign elsewhere. - Ac44ck (talk) 05:09, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Better example needed 

message: Black Swan events by token of the theory outside the present verification of the author of the theory:
# The Titanic disaster, North Atlantic Ocean. April 14/15, 1912 Sinking of the Titanic
# The Japanese bombing strike against United States naval base Pearl Harbour, Hawaii. December 7, 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor
Wikipedia rejects attempts to introduce these events on its page «Black swan theory» Black swan theory.  In returned notations it is that only a verifiable and introduced reliable source would permit the entry within the Wikipedia article. 
--Laurencebeck (talk) 03:35, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I rather agree with Laurencebeck (talk). I haven't checked to see if both events remain in the Black swan theory article. If still present, consider removal, for the reasons stated above, no? --FeralOink (talk) 01:27, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

text: Both suggestions were implemented some time in April 2012, I just confirmed. Thank you. --FeralOink (talk) 01:49, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Black Swan event outside the verification of Taleb. 

message: Surely the must be better examples of Black Swans than these SAP-related system failures. Wikifier (talk) 02:09, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I’m more concerned about the section being full of arcane corporatespeak and computer engineering jargon. Concerned enough to tag it with a ((technical)) template, as a matter of fact.—Quick and Dirty User Account (talk) 11:47, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Quite true, but if you read the history of other examples that eventually were deleted, SAP implementation is all that is left. Should we then have NO examples listed?Wzrd1 (talk) 13:30, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

text:  It's not corpspeak as much as it's very badly written. Improve the grammar, punctuation, and spelling and it would be much clearer. --NellieBlyMobile (talk) 19:47, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

text: Agreed, there is some jargon and poor use of language. I'm not acquainted with the specific cases listed, so I'm not really able to help clarifying it. The best I can think of to initially clarify it is to explain the software, rather than use specific vendor product names, as most non-IT types don't know what SAP R/3 is, ERP or what a Pinnacle is beyond the geographic term. I'm not even certain one could call it Black Swan for some, as over-expectation of a new software platform and sweeping software changes project implementation issues, incorrect assumptions on the capabilities of the new technology and byzantine failures in communicating needs vs what is being implemented that fragment and ultimately derail a major technology project. Perhaps one IT example and perhaps a more natural Black Swan event, such as West Nile Virus causing ecological impact that was totally unanticipated, under-appreciated until wildlife population crashes and human disease clusters brought it to national attention. A major impact is a rather relative term, depending on what is being considered impacted. The Black Swan isn't what is considered impossible, it tends to instead by a completely surprising event that was not dismissed, but never even considered, as it never occurred in the past and resulted in a significant impact. Hence, the Titanic sinking wasn't by itself a Black Swan event, but the deaths due to a lack of sufficient lifeboats being available may potentially be considered one, due to regulations requiring sufficient lifeboats on vessels after the event.Wzrd1 (talk) 20:50, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I just returned to this article after being away a few months. I lol'd at the sub-heading here, on the talk page! And shuddered when I read those monolithic blocks of boring and excessively detailed prose in the "Examples" section. No, that isn't fair, nor even accurate. They aren't boring, if I read them from the mind set of say... a Harvard Business School case study on IT project management disasters. Yet I doubt that that is what we need here. Good point about nothing else being an example of this Black Swan Theory. As others have said, it is somewhat due to there not quite being a theory, not according to Taleb, but more of an event, which is covered elsewhere. But the term has taken on a life of its own, outside of Wikipedia, so I understand that we can't merge or expunge it. I DO like Wzrd1's example of the deaths due to the Titanic sinking, as it is more accessible than ERP. I will try to get back to this, do something about it. If I do, I would like to excerpt some of Wrzrd1's wording above. Is that acceptable? If not, Wzrd1 can feel free to do so, as I might not get around to this for awhile anyway. --FeralOink (talk) 17:24, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maybe we should rename "Examples" to "SAP System Failures" 

message: The whole page reads like an extended advertisement for Taleb's books. Did he perhaps write the whole page himself? Or maybe some PR flack for his publisher wrote it?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.160.30.132 (talk) 21:13, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The fallacy was widely known before Taleb's book from 2007. I think that the general concept should be placed in Black swan fallacy (which now redirects to Falsifiability) and Taleb's work should be moved to The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Menemenetekelufarsim (talk) 10:55, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: No objections for two months, so I will move the general concept to Black swan fallacy now. Menemenetekelufarsim (talk) 16:28, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  You are conflating the idea of black swan events (Taleb) and the fallacy. This does not read like advert. PopulationGeneticsLevant (talk) 17:39, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Since  reverted 's edit here, I reverted the edit of Black swan fallacy back to a redirect. See also the Wiktionary entry wikt:black swan fallacy. We would need more content about the black swan fallacy to justify expanding the redirect into an article. Biogeographist (talk) 18:07, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reads like an advertisement 

message: Considering the pictures don't actually relate to the article, maybe it would be more fitting to just include the first picture? Archlinux (talk) 03:08, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Irrelevant Pictures 

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