Primary source
The Black Swan
Written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb · 2007 · grounds Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Overview
Rare, high-impact, retrospectively-rationalized events, and why forecasting and expert prediction routinely miss them. The book that made Taleb's name.
A full write-up of this book has not been published yet.
Skills drawn from this book
Installable Claude Code skills grounded in this text. Each one teaches a framework the book actually argues for.
/nassim-taleb:black-swan-triplet-testThe Black Swan Triplet TestBefore you call something a Black Swan or claim you saw it coming, run the event through the three tests that actually define one: rarity, extreme impact, retrospective predictability.
/nassim-taleb:mediocristan-extremistan-mapMediocristan or ExtremistanClassify the domain you are measuring before you trust an average, a sample size, or a track record, because the two provinces of randomness obey opposite rules.
/nassim-taleb:turkey-problemThe Turkey ProblemTreat a long, comfortable track record as a warning sign, not a guarantee, because the turkey's confidence peaks the day before its confidence is proven wrong.
/nassim-taleb:narrative-fallacy-guardGuard Against the Narrative FallacyNotice the moment a sequence of facts gets welded into a tidy cause and effect story, because the story always feels more true than the facts alone, and that feeling is the danger.
/nassim-taleb:silent-evidence-auditThe Silent Evidence AuditBefore you learn a lesson from a success story or a track record, go find the graveyard of people who did the exact same thing and are not around to tell you about it.
/nassim-taleb:ludic-fallacy-checkThe Ludic Fallacy CheckBefore you trust a probability, a model, or a game-derived intuition about risk, check whether real life actually shares the closed, known rules of the game you learned it from.
/nassim-taleb:fourth-quadrant-mapThe Fourth Quadrant MapSort any risky decision by two questions, is the payoff simple or open-ended, and does this domain allow extreme outcomes, then apply the specific set of rules that survive the one dangerous quadrant.