Mathematician Nassim Taleb popularized the term “black swan effect” to refer to the kinds of big phenomena one never thought would happen and that have a potentially catastrophic outcome.
The origins of the expression date backs to the second century CE when the Roman poet Juvenal referred to “a bird as rare upon the earth as a black swan,” as the Romans had only encountered white swans. A complete biological theory was developed to explain the swans’ singular coloring – that is, until the 17th century, when Dutch mariners discovered black swans in Australia, thereby rendering the paradigm obsolete in the blink of a black eye.
While Taleb may not have come up with the term “black swan,” he applied it to statistically unexpected events of such large magnitude that they profoundly affect history. A small number of black swans, Taleb says, can explain just about everything in our world, from the success of ideas and religions to elements of our personal lives.
Taleb’s black swans can be characterized by a triplet: rarity, extreme impact and retrospective predictability.
- Rarity: A black swan event is an outlier that exists beyond the realm of normal expectations. Nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility.
- Extreme impact: The Black Plague of the Middle Ages is frequently cited here. In the modern age, Covid-19 serves a similar role, since the pandemic arrived unexpectedly and transformed society.
- Retrospective predictability: Human nature prompts us to concoct after-the-fact explanations for how a seemingly inexplicable black swan event could occur. If we can predict a black swan, the thinking goes, we might be able to better manage it if it happens again.
I’ve been thinking a lot about black swans as Rosh Hashana approaches this year, just days before the one-year anniversary of October 7, the Middle East’s most infamous black swan of the last year.
The events of. Oct. 7 were rare (hopefully), had extreme impact (Israeli society has changed drastically in the 12 months since), and we are now in the phase of trying to make sense (after the fact) of what happened on that dark day and the subsequent unleashing of unbridled antisemitism around the world.
What Oct. 7 taught us is that everything taken for granted can be flipped with little or no warning. That’s a message in keeping with the High Holyday season liturgy, which hints at the existence of black swans.
On Rosh Hashana, we pray that our actions over the past year will warrant inscription in the Book of Life, while at the same time admitting that we have little control over our fates and that black swan-inspired change can happen on a dime when we least anticipate it.
Black swan events are everywhere.
- When a soldier or civilian is killed, everything changes radically for his or her family. Retroactively trying to understand the “why” behind the death is in keeping with black swan theory.
- A cancer diagnosis frequently comes out of the blue; it immediately changes the way you approach life, increases your awareness of the imminence of death, while reorienting your personal and professional priorities.
- When the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, everything changed – for the people who died, of course, but also the long-term direction of nuclear warfare.
- Natural disasters – an earthquake, tornado or tsunami – all leave the playing field vastly changed from what it was just moments before.
- Some analysts may claim they can foresee a stock market crash, but for most people, it feels like a loose brick on a tall building aiming squarely at our livelihoods.
- On the positive side, marriage changes things – hopefully for the better – as does the birth of a new baby, which alters the life of the child’s parents (and grandparents) forever.
Sometimes, paradoxically, we yearn for a black swan event.
Our political discourse and our tragically flawed leadership (worldwide, not just in Israel) are in desperate need of change. We can’t continue with the current hate-fueled divisiveness. Lately, though, it seems pointless to even dream.
And yet, the message of Rosh Hashana and black swan theory is that this, too, can change without notice. Fresh starts are always possible.
After all, if the United States can ping-pong between Donald Trump as president in 2016, Joe Biden four years later, and potentially back to Trump in 2024, the same could happen here. The current Israeli coalition could fall; sane and competent ministers could take over after new elections; Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar could release the hostages and decamp to Tunisia; the Iranian people could rise up and overthrow the ayatollahs.
“This war will almost certainly [produce] a new generation of leaders inside of Israel,” notes British journalist Douglas Murray, author of the best-selling book The War on the West. “This past year has produced remarkable people who stepped up to the moment. My hope is that a new generation of Palestinian leaders will come along at some point, too.”
The average Israeli has little sway over any of these black swan events. Instead, we take comfort from the concluding lines of Rosh Hashana’s Un’taneh Tokef prayer:
- Who will live in quietude and who will be tormented?
- Who will enjoy tranquility and who will be distressed?
- Who will be impoverished and who will be enriched?
- Who will be degraded and who will be exalted?
That’s my hope for the coming year – that we will live in quietude and tranquility, that we will no longer be degraded and impoverished by our leaders and enemies alike but will be enriched and exalted, and that a new reality will upend the region, whitewashing away the destructive black swans in our midst.
I first shared my Rosh Hashana prayer at The Jerusalem Post.
Black swan image: Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash
