Black Swan

Forgive me for I’m about to shamelessly pull esoteric data from Wikipedia. Relax, I’ll get to the point eventually; and I actually do have one.

There once was a phrase that meant “this thing doesn’t exist”. It popped up in second century Rome as “rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno”. (I don’t speak Latin so I’m trusting Wikipedia spelled it correctly.) What that meant was “a rare bird in the lands and very much like a black swan“.

Everyone in Rome had seen a swan. Probably everyone in the whole damn Roman Empire had seen a swan. Every swan everyone had seen everywhere was white. Black swans simply didn’t exist. After the totality of human existence and all of known civilization examining every swan they saw, the science was settled. Black swans were impossible

A black swan was a good analogy for something that can’t exist. You could compare them to honest politicians, a pizza that has no calories, or drinking a bottle of bourbon without a hangover.

“Did the new politician reduce my taxes to zero?”

“Did you vote for a black swan?”

“Awwww… shit.”

We have similar sayings in modern America. When we want to say “yes, definitely” we can say “does a bear shit in the woods?”

“Yo, Curmudgeon, did you bring your hunting rifle?”

“Does a bear shit in the woods?”

“Cool! Lets go.”

See? Certain phrases just work.

The black swan analogy was so good that it outlasted several languages, the rise and fall of empires, and the passing of various civilizations. The Romans kept using it for centuries. The saying persisted throughout the Medieval period. It persisted through the Renaissance. It was going strong in the Early Modern Period.

Then some asshole ruined everything.

In 1697, Dutch explorers found black swans in Australia. Nearly two thousand years of a really excellent analogy for “this thing doesn’t exist” and then some dude in a boat finds that exact thing. It ruined the whole analogy!

“I’m looking for an honest horse dealer and they’re as rare as a black swan.”

“Well actually, black swans were found in Australia.”

“Shut up Poindexter!”

Recently, the black black swan analogy has taken on a new and more interesting meaning. It’s good for describing something big and important that nobody sees coming because it’s never happened before. Nobody thought it possible or even considered it… right until it came knocking on the front door. When it happens and shocks the hell out of everyone, we retroactively think “gosh, we could have considered that outcome but we just didn’t know it was possible”.

It’s a useful concept. It’s sometimes used in risk analysis and economics. Also, there’s this one blogger that really wants you to grok the concept so he can move on to part 2 of this post.

Remember, the whole point of black swans is because nobody had ever seen one it was  very hard to entertain the possibility one could happen. The human mind isn’t wired that way. We expect tomorrow to be more or less like yesterday.

Yet things that we’ve never seen before occur all the damn time. It makes sense that it would. A thing that hasn’t yet happened isn’t removed from the realm of possibility. We just can’t quite manage that level of thinking.

Bears, presumably, still shit in the woods.

Stay tuned for part 2.