Is Climate Change the Real Black Swan?

‘If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.’ - George Bernard Shaw 

It is with some apprehension that I comment on the work of Nassim Taleb and the idea of the Black Swan. The concept was rigorously discussed in Taleb’s book of the same name published in 2007. 

Taleb is a formidable and precise thinker and since at present I only have a basic understanding of the nuances of the Black Swan, I hope he will forgive me for any errors in my presentation of it.

The concept goes something like this:

Before the sighting of the first black swan, people were convinced that all swans were white. In fact, it’s likely that the concept of a swan being black didn’t even enter our consciousness.

According to Taleb this illustrates that putting too much faith in what we learn from experience can be a risky business.

“One single observation can invalidate a general statement derived from millennia of confirmatory sightings of millions of white swans”.

Taleb goes on to argue, and quite convincingly, that our world is dominated by Black Swan events. In a nutshell, we are not very good at predicting and preparing for the events which will impact us most.

A brief look at history makes the idea of the Black Swan particularly compelling! Think about the First World War, the recent financial crisis, the rise of the internet…etc

The Black Swan has three main attributes:

It lies outside of our usual expectations since no past event can alert us to its possibility.

Its impact is extreme.

After the event, we tend to invent explanations for its occurrence which fool us into  thinking it was predictable and explainable.

The concept of the Black Swan has strong ramifications for the prediction of future events, particularly in complex systems.

There seems a natural link here between Black Swan events and the issue of Climate Change. I would welcome any thoughts on how the two might be related.

For example, is Climate Change a Black Swan or is Climate Change not as relevant as we might think since the real danger to humanity is something we can’t even yet conceive of?

References:

The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Penguin Books, 2007

Image courtesy of ecstaticists