Black Swans

David Hume: "No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion."

Karl Popper: "You cannot know with any certainty that a proposition is true; you can only know that it is not true."

Malcom Gladwell on Black Swans and Blowing Up
Wikipedia page for Taleb's Book "Black Swans"
Wikipedia page for "Fooled By Randomness"

A few key ideas in all of this:

• The richest guy at the end of the day might be the luckiest and not the smartest.
• There are two paths to the same end, loosing a little bit every day and then winning big, and winning a little bit every day and then loosing big.
  
• People try too hard to explain randomness.
• Disruptive events are magnified in their intensity by not being expected.
• Disruptive events happen more often than one would expect because people are chaotic.
• People trust their own beliefs too much.
  
• Few people have the best strategy for taking advantage of the unknown.