When the Japanese earthquake, tsunami and nukes crisis hit, Nassim Taleb, author, former options trader, and Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University, was besieged with 600 interview requests. It’s not surprising: Taleb popularized the phrase “black swan” in his 2007 best-selling book of the same name.
Taleb isn’t giving interviews ( “I think for a living & write books not interviews,” Taleb writes on his website) so I took another look at his writings and tried to glean where he might stand. First, some background: A “black swan” is a metaphor used by philosophers over the centuries to capture the surprise effects of scientifically improbable and therefore unexpected events on history, inspired by the 17th century discovery of black swans in Australia when biologists had previously declared all swans were white swans. CONTINUE READING…
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