Taleb's Big Idea

In 2007, former options trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb published "The Black Swan," arguing that rare, unpredictable, high-impact events drive most of history — and that we're terrible at anticipating them.

The term comes from the old belief that all swans were white — until black swans were discovered in Australia.

A Black Swan has three properties: it's unpredictable, it has massive impact, and after it happens, everyone constructs explanations making it seem obvious in hindsight. The 2008 crash, 9/11, and some technological shocks are often discussed as Black Swan examples; COVID-19 is more contested, and Taleb himself called it a foreseeable white swan rather than a true Black Swan.