The Turkey Problem

Nassim Taleb's most vivid illustration: a turkey is fed every day for 1,000 days. Each feeding confirms its belief that humans are friendly, and its confidence grows with every data point. On day 1,001 — Thanksgiving — the turkey's model collapses catastrophically.

The turkey's error: it lived in Extremistan but modeled its world as Mediocristan. Every "being fed" was a sample from mild randomness. The slaughter was a fat-tail event that no amount of bell-curve reasoning could predict.