I'm on my second reading of Nasim Nicholas Taleb's, 'The Black Swan'.

It has to be admitted that the author comes across as rather smug and self-satisfied - but, if you can get past that, he has some interesting things to say. He believes that history, economics and the world in general are much more governed by blind chance than we give them credit for. We believe that 'all swans are white' until a black one comes along and shatters all of our expectations and certainties. He says that human history is littered with 'black swan' events that came 'out of nowhere'. No-one, for example, predicted the First World War or 9/11. Nevertheless, countless people invented narratives to explain these events after the fact.

He gives many examples in the book of humanity's relationship to Black Swans. The one which sticks in my mind is about a casino in Las Vegas. This establishment understood the nature of gambling intimately (of course they did!) and insured themselves against relatively rare big wins. They also understood the various ways in which people can attempt to cheat and had put very sophisticated security systems in place to prevent cheating. Then they were hit with a Black Swan. The IRS obliged them to submit a particular document every time a gambler won money over a certain amount. The clerk in charge of this aspect of the Casino's operation had (for an unknown reason) stored the documents in a drawer rather than post them. The casino was fined a massive amount by the IRS and was nearly bankrupted.

Taleb says that we are like turkeys who believe that they live a pampered and well-fed existence and fail to anticipate Christmas (or Thanksgiving if you're an American).