The eccentricity of the Black Swans - indispensable tool for Post-Scarcity
Autor: Luiz Pagano | Publicado: 2014-06-14T19:14:00-07:00



Tiffany and Pagano have a strange encounter with a Triceratops - Unexpected events tend to have serious outcomes - to deal with the 'Black Swans' is fundamental to reach a Post-Scarcity scenario&nbsp;


One of the great problems of Post-Scarcity is how we should deal with the unknown factors.

When we look at the case of Romildo and their varying degrees of integration with the Post-Scarcity, we realize that if he were exposed to a fatal unknown factor, the whole story would be over. He could have been eaten by an ‘onça’ (kind of Brazilian spotted jaguar) in the first few seconds, and would not have the chance to be exposed to the various stages of Post-Scarcity. That being said, what would be the best way to be prepared for the unknown?

leia este artigo em Português

Nassim Nicholas Taleb may have the answer in his book ‘The Black Swan’. The expression derives from the Old World presumption that all swans must be white once there is no historical records of black swans reported after Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh discovered them in Western Australia in the year 1697.

The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight.

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.

The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities).

The psychological biases that make people individually and collectively blind to uncertainty and unaware of the massive role of the rare event in historical affairs.

The first step to deal whith the Black Swan is knowing how to identify it.

The event is a surprise (to the observer).

The event has a major effect.







The predictability of an event does not necessarily lead to a favorable outcome




After the first recorded instance of the event, it is rationalized by hindsight, as if it could have been expected; that is, the relevant data were available but unaccounted for in risk mitigation programs. The same is true for the personal perception by individuals.

The main idea in Taleb's book is not to attempt to predict black swan events, but to build robustness against negative ones that occur and be able to exploit positive ones. Taleb contends that banks and trading firms are very vulnerable to hazardous black swan events and are exposed to unpredictable losses. On the subject of business in particular, Taleb is highly critical of the widespread use of the Normal Distribution model as the basis for calculating risk.

In probability theory, the Normal (or Gaussian) Distribution is a very commonly occurring continuous probability distribution a function that tells the probability that any real observation will fall between any two real limits or real numbers, as the curve approaches zero on either side. Normal distributions are extremely important in statistics and are often used in the natural and social sciences for real-valued random variables whose distributions are not known.

One problem, labeled by Taleb is the ludic fallacy, the belief that the unstructured randomness found in life resembles the structured randomness found in games. This stems from the assumption that the unexpected may be predicted by extrapolating from variations in statistics based on past observations, especially when these statistics are presumed to represent samples from a normal distribution. These concerns often are highly relevant in financial markets, where major players sometimes assume normal distributions when using value at risk models, although market returns typically have fat tail distributions.

How should we deal with Black Swans

The answer to a Black Swan is invariably: "Oh yes, it was not possible to anticipate this one!".

As all passed civilizations, we only master partially our life. it is not possible to predict a black swan, but there will always be unforeseen events.

And, we are not aware that major unforeseen events have a larger impact on our life than the daily, foreseeable, minor trends!

The strangeness of the black swans and the way we deal with them, make us stronger and more creative. Creativity, associated to the full knowledge, it is the best tool we have to thrive in a post-scarcity scenario.

In popular usage, eccentricity (also called quirkiness) refers to unusual or odd behavior on the part of an individual. To distracted eyes, this behavior would typically be perceived as unusual or unnecessary, but be sure that when people see you recycling water, or using waves movements to generate energy to your house, you will be deemed as an eccentric guy.