“The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
We live in an era of dramatic, improbable events that adversely affect the economy, the environment, the fate of household name companies and people’s welfare and health. Or at least they seem improbable until they hurl themselves violently upon us from the shadows of our agreeable ignorance.