Photos

On the way to a restaurant on the New Year's night, i ran into a pond with a fountain where two swans were "bathing" under the splashing water. They were floating on the pond such in a solid manner that, from a distance i was illusioned first, thinking that they were plastic ducks. It was an extremely difficult photo to make: i was totally dipped in mud with my New Year's clothes on to approach the vision as much as possible, the lighting was impossible with a contrast of extreme brightness and extreme darkness, the swans were always floating from here to there, I and my lens were getting soaked up by the sprays of water, and finally i was out of battery trying to make a reasonable photo.

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The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that encapsulates the concept that the event is a surprise (to the observer) and has a major impact. After the fact, the event is rationalized by hindsight.

The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain:
1.The disproportionate role of high-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance and technology
2.The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities)
3.The psychological biases that make people individually and collectively blind to uncertainty and unaware of the massive role of the rare event in historical affairs

Unlike the earlier philosophical "black swan problem", the "black swan theory" refers only to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence and their dominant role in history. Such events, considered extreme outliers, collectively play vastly larger roles than regular occurrences

Identifying a black swan event, based on the author's criteria:
1.The event is a surprise (to the observer).
2.The event has a major impact.
3.After its first recording, the event is rationalized by hindsight, as if it could have been expected (e.g., the relevant data were available but not accounted for).