BLACK SWANS ARE MORE COMMON THAN WE THINK.

BLACK SWANS ARE MORE COMMON THAN WE THINK. In THE BLACK SWAN, Taleb’s main contention is that we greatly underestimate both the probability of outliers and their consequences. He rejects the applicability of the “normal” bell curve outside of gambling casinos and similar environments. Taleb believes that the bell curve is unrealistic for rare events: the probability curve for rare events in real life as opposed to gambling casinos has a “fat tail” with rare events having a much higher probability than a bell curve would predict. Taleb believes that financial crises (of the kind that we are having now) will be much more frequent than is commonly supposed.