Black swans What do you think?

by Rain Trueax

As a writer, I am always fascinated by terms I hadn't known. Such a one came to me this year-- black swan.

Definition: A black swan is an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences. Black swan events are characterized by their extreme rarity, their severe impact, and the practice of explaining widespread failure to predict them as simple folly in hindsight.

Some take them only to be about major institutions or events that impact a whole culture or even the world. I think they can be seen as also about our individual lives.

In two books, Nassim Nicholas Taleb discussed these events: Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan. The first was about how they appear in financial affairs and the second how they go beyond that. He took it to have it impacting all major scientific discoveries, historical events, and even artistic accomplishments. The thing they have in common, as he saw it was they were undirected and unpredicted.  Some examples he used were the rise of the internet, personal computers, WWI, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the big one for the US-- 9/11.

Putting it briefly, Taleb asserts:

"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.

"I stop and summarize the triplet: rarity, extreme 'impact', and retrospective (though not prospective) predictability. A small number of Black Swans explains almost everything in our world, from the success of ideas and religions, to the dynamics of historical events, to elements of our own personal lives."

The question I raise regarding his assumptions would be-- were they really all that unpredictable or was it that some were calling for it to happen and it was ignored?  There were those who warned there was going to be a terrorist attack at least near to 9/11. Some knew about the flying lessons. It was all ignored. Some had said for a long time that cockpit doors should be re-enforced. Too expensive. For those who didn't think it could be so catastrophic, again if they had been looking, would that also appear true? So, 9/11 was life changing for us as a nation but was it truly a black swan?

Questioning when it's a black swan is also true of the arts, where it might seem that a Van Gogh came from out of nowhere but in reality he was building on what had happened earlier and went a different way from it. If a person defines black swans as something that changes it all, then Picasso could be seen as one even if you could look at the reasons why he saw what he did and it's not that unexpected-- after the fact, of course.

In our lives, we cannot predict many things and they can alter our lives totally. Random violence, loss of a loved one that seems to come from nowhere, loss of income, or a disease that we had no reason to expect. As a writer, it's tricky to use black swans because readers want to believe something makes sense. They want to see that what is coming could be predicted if one paid attention to the elements for what was happening. Still, sometimes a writer can use a black swan to show the impact on personality and actions.

Sunsets, such as this one from December 28th can illustrate how a writer lays the groundwork for an event. At our Tucson home, we always look to see if the clouds look interesting enough-- lots of lines and shapes. Without those, you just have a pretty sky. By themselves though they aren't enough-- will the color come also? Sometimes darker clouds move in to block the light or the interesting clouds move on before the sun can set. These photos are all from one sunset December 28th.

Plotting fiction involves having the reader see something is coming. To make it exciting, there have to be different elements that come together. If it is to have a black swan, it's how the characters react that an make it feel true. Of course, some writers like to lay that groundwork and then go for something unexpected-- the surprise-- even the black swan. As a reader, which I am as well as a writer, surprises work only when I can see the other option was always out there and the writer hadn't forced it just to keep the story unexpected and a surprise. Always first and foremost will be the character reacting in a way true to his/her character-- blindsided by a black swan or not.

Truly random? Important but possibly concocted in the story and life? What do you think about black swans?