The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

[trickykitty]

From discussions with a friend about certain events in my life.

What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes.

First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.

~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, New York Times

Summarized:
1. The event is a surprise (to the observer).
2. The event has a major impact.
3. After the fact, the event is rationalized by hindsight, as if it had been expected.

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What happens when you still can't rationalize it even in hindsight?
Cognitive dissonance? Mental paralysis? PTSD?

If the person can't rationalize it, does that make the person irrational or the event?

Comments

[evilpyrate]

My first response is a question - what sorts of life event are we discussing? Second is what is the definition of "rationalization"?

There are plenty of surprise events that you can't really rationalize into something predictable. My take on "rationalizing" these falls under the heading of recognizing that sometimes "shit happens".

Shit happens indeed sumarizes it, I think

[trickykitty]

1) Well, the particular events are not really something I'm willing to discuss in an open forum like this.

2) I think "rationalization" is being able to reconcile the idea that the event was a possible logical conclusion had other factors been known/considered previous to the event itself. The idea of not being able to rationalize it then becomes that, even if given those other factors and hindsight, one still does not accept that the event was a possible logical conclusion. This is irrelevant of the conclusions of others, as the event might be seen as perfectly logical to them.

It's kind of like someone saying, "Well, what did you THINK would happen?" And the response being, "Well, I never thought THAT would happen, and I still can't believe that it did or that it still hasn't resolved itself out in some other logical/meaningful way."

I think it's just hard sometimes [for me] to accept how different people are and how people react to situations so differently that one reaction can seem irrational to another.

Re: Shit happens indeed sumarizes it, I think

[evilpyrate]

People also happen. ;)

Some people have more mental flexibility/resiliency that allows them to more easily allow for the unexpected as it happens and/or deal with its aftermath.

Some have more "strategic" thinking ability in terms of predicting outcomes when it's not possible to know all of the influencing factors ahead of time (like most of life).

[trickykitty]

Although technically, by saying "shit happens" you have indeed still managed to rationalize the event into "shit". To me, that's a bit different from talking about a course of events as being "ridiculous, crazy, outrageous, preposterous, etc".

The difference between other stupid, ridiculous events and the Black Swan is the level of major impact the event has, thereby increasing the mental need to properly rationalize it and make sense of what happened.

[evilpyrate]

It's still a case of understanding scope. Are we talking sudden onset of life threatening or changing medical condition? Unexpected job loss? Family meltdown? etc, etc, etc.

In some form or fashion, we always need to be able to put the right mental tagging on events. Even if that tag is just "Wow. Never saw that coming".

My brain usually files events quickly, then moves on to "next steps", rather than taking an extended period to get the perfect sized folder and make sure the font is right on the labels.

Obviously, not everybody works that way.