CONSOLATIONS OF PHILOSOPHY–WE ARE ALL BLACK SWANS.

CONSOLATIONS OF PHILOSOPHY–WE ARE ALL BLACK SWANS.. The world view of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s THE BLACK SWAN is a very pessimistic one. We know much less than we think we do. We live in an unpredictable world where sudden calamities occur much more frequently than we think (of course, there may also be happy surprises as well–writers like Shakespeare, as I posted in September 2007). Taleb concludes the book with a consoling thought. “Imagine a speck of dust next to a planet a billion times the size of the earth. The speck of dust represents the odds in favor of your being born; the huge planet would be the odds against it…..Stop looking the gift horse in the mouth–remember that you are a Black Swan.”