>[!abstract] >A black swan, popularized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, refers to a rare, high-impact event that lies outside regular expectations and is only rationalized in hindsight. Such events are characterized by three features: they are unpredictable from the standpoint of ordinary knowledge, they have extreme consequences, and people construct explanations afterward that make them seem less random than they were. The metaphor underscores the limits of inductive reasoning and probabilistic models when dealing with uncertainty, highlighting the need for resilience and antifragility rather than reliance on prediction. >[!related] >- **North** (upstream): [[Problem of induction]] >- **West** (similar): [[Fat tail risk]] >- **East** (different): [[Mediocristan]] >- **South** (downstream): —