So with the obvious current situation out of the way, just what is a black swan event? Black swan event examples He said: “Such acute pandemic is unavoidable, the result of the structure of the modern world and its economic consequences would be compounded because of the increased connectivity and over-optimisation.” In another interview with The New Yorker, he said that black swan had become “a cliché for any bad thing that surprises us”.

Instead, Taleb believes the pandemic is a “ white swan: something that would eventually take place with great certainty”. Last year, he told Bloomberg that he is “ irritated” about the misconception of covid as being a black swan event because goverments had in fact been previously warned about being prepared for such a crisis. In interviews given when the coronavirus pandemic worsened in March 2020, Taleb described the outbreak as “ preventable”. Why? Well, the man who coined the black swan theory in 2007, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, said there were three key ingredients that contributed to such an event: it is so rare that no one could have even anticipated it, its effects are catastrophic, and it is regarded as predictable in hindsight. But you may be surprised to know that the coronavirus outbreak is not classed as a black swan event. Of course, the Covid-19 pandemic may be the first example that springs to mind. These events have such magnitude that they can bring down economies, societies and people. The man who invented the black swan theoryīlack swan events are highly improbable, difficult to predict incidents that end up having drastic consequences.

The black swan effect book