The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

"A small number of Black Swans explain almost everything in our world, from the success of ideas and religions, to the dynamics of historical events, to elements of our own personal lives."

According to Taleb, human history is less affected by an accumulation of everyday mundane events than by Black Swan events, which can transform our way of life. These outliers, though less numerous than white swan events, are far more impactful.

"Ideas come and go, stories stay."

Taleb argues that philosophical abstractions or logical premises carry less power in the human imagination than stories, which help us reduce the events that occur around us to palatable narratives.

"We tend to treat our knowledge as personal property to be protected and defended."

While explaining Umberto Eco's antilibrary, in which Eco valued the books he hadn't read more than the ones he had, Taleb criticizes the tendency to treat knowledge as a personal commodity. Taleb emphasizes the awareness of our own ignorance and what we don't yet know as being even more valuable than accumulated knowledge.

"It struck me, a belief that has never left me since, that we are just a great machine for looking backward, and that humans are great at self-delusion."

Taleb argues that we are constantly seeking to understand history and predict how future events may unfold by applying hindsight bias to past events. This leads to a delusional understanding of history by means of cause-and-effect relationships.

"When I play back in my mind all the 'advice' people have given me, I see that only a couple of ideas have stuck with me for life."

Taleb makes it clear that he does not easily change his mind or acquiesce to the first idea that comes his way. Here he emphasizes this within the context of personal counsel he has been given during this lifetime.

"From the standpoint of the turkey, the nonfeeding of the one thousand and first day is a Black Swan."

Taleb uses the illustration of a turkey being killed as an example that, up until the point of the one thousand and first day, the turkey believes that life will go on as usual. If it is fed for one thousand consecutive days, it will never see a Black Swan event—in this case, its own death—approach.

"Knowledge, even when it is exact, does not often lead to appropriate actions because we tend to forget what we know, or forget how to process it properly if we do not pay attention, even when we are experts."

Taleb argues that we are unable to apply our knowledge accurately or appropriately to tangible situations or practical outcomes. Even experts, who in theory should know how to convert concepts into actionable steps, are limited in their ability.

"We, members of the human variety of primates, have a hunger for rules because we need to reduce the dimension of matters so they can get into our heads."

According to Taleb, rules are a way for human beings to process information and principles into bite-sized directives. Following a list of "dos" and "don'ts" simplifies our mental processes.

"Our intuitions are not cut out for nonlinearities."

Taleb argues that human beings are by nature drawn to linear thinking, which often relies on simple cause-and-effect relationships to explain an event. The nonlinear nature of Black Swans provides an immense challenge for most human minds to process, unless the mind has been trained to accept and seek out the nonlinear.

"Silent evidence pervades everything connected to the notion of history."

According to Taleb, "silent evidence" refers to everything that is not overtly explained about a concept or event, but that contextualizes history. As history is often told by the survivors of the battle or the predominant voices of a culture, silent evidence is at once pervasive and often forgotten.

"There is a belief among gamblers that beginners are almost always lucky."

Taleb is highly critical of gambling analogies to assess risks or improbable events, as these analogies trivialize the existence of Black Swans, which make a real impact in human lives.

"Randomness and uncertainty are abstractions." 

Taleb argues that most people have a hard time processing randomness or uncertainty because, up until the point where something happens, like a stock market crash or unlikely international conflict, these concepts exist merely as theoretical notions.

"You cannot ignore self-delusion."

Taleb criticizes experts who claim to know everything. In Taleb's view, their claim to all-encompassing knowledge is a self-delusion, which lessens the value of knowledge itself.

"The classical model of discovery is as follows: you search for what you know (say, a new way to reach India) and find something you didn't know was there."

Black Swans challenge our traditional methods of inquiry and discovery. Many of our greatest discoveries have come from accidental efforts to find or discover something else, like Columbus’s discovery of America when he was seeking the Far East.

"We are not predisposed to respect humble people, those who try to suspend judgment."

According to Taleb, most of humanity is conditioned to respect experts, who in theory have accumulated the most knowledge, and which they feel allows them to make judgments. Taleb argues that those who in humility suspend judgment do not lack confidence, but are cautious when it comes to making absolute statements.

"Everyone has an idea of utopia."

Taleb prepares to lay out his own idea of utopia, which consists not of universal social justice or freedom from oppression, but of a society in which what we don't know would be more valued than what we do know—an epistemocracy.

"Trial and error means trying a lot."

Taleb argues that trial and error, after much persistence, will often yield a positive outcome. He describes a painter who tried persistently to capture the image of foam coming out of a horse's mouth, and only succeeded once he threw his sponge at the canvas in frustration.

"The more that time passes, the worse things seem to me, the more scared I get, the more disgusted I am with Mother Nature."

In the passage that surrounds this quote, Taleb expresses his revolt with the world, which he argues is increasingly random and unpredictable in ways that hinder us from truly understanding it.

"True, intellectually sophisticated characters were exactly what I looked for in life." 

Taleb's heroes are not athletes or those who risk their physical safety, but people who think carefully and thoughtfully about the factors that impact how the world works. More specifically, he is impressed by people who combine intellectual aptitude with integrity.

"Philosophers, the watchdogs of critical thinking, have duties beyond those of other professions." 

Here, Taleb argues that philosophers have the primary responsibility of interpreting the world for us. To fully capture the nature of the world, philosophers must acknowledge that Black Swans are an inherent part of it.

"I worry less about advertised and sensational risks, more about the more vicious hidden ones."

In the final pages of the book, Taleb is candid about his fears and worries. In this passage, he expresses his concern for our collective lack of urgency about things like diabetes, which are less sensational than terrorism, but kill thousands upon thousands of people worldwide every year.

"It is more difficult to be a loser in a game you set up yourself."

When we learn to accept that Black Swan events change the world, we will be less afraid to confront their aftermath. If the game is one in which unpredictability is an expected aspect, you cannot lose.

"We are quick to forget that just being alive is an extraordinary piece of good luck, a remote event, a chance occurrence of monstrous proportions."

Here, Taleb is uncharacteristically hopeful and optimistic. He advises the reader to think of their own lives as Black Swans, exalting the miracle of merely existing as a human being.