If you Google the term “black swan,” you’ll likely be overwhelmed with references to a movie starring Natalie Portman. But you must keep scrolling. Those of you who have taken a course in statistics are familiar with the term “black swan,” because one black swan is all you need to overturn (falsify) the hypothesis that all swans in nature are white. This notion that all swans are white cannot be proven because one cannot observe all swans. Black swans are also the subject of a famous book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. This post is called Warning! Black Swans Sighted because a number of isolated (yet somehow linked) events are emerging from the misty future. For example, a historical supply chain problem may explain a phenomenal rise in the costs of a new home while another black swan (the rapidly climbing interest rates) makes it increasingly difficult for people to purchase new homes now in the first place. And who ever thought that a huge country like Russia could not quickly conquer a much smaller nation like the Ukraine, because most of the spare parts for Russia’s weapons systems (aircraft, missiles, tanks and so on) are manufactured in Ukraine? With the war, nothing is being produced.
Taleb wrote in 2001 about a theory named after black swans. A black swan to Taleb is not a bird but rather a highly improbable event. He mentions three associated, definitive characteristics of such an event:
“First of all, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of reasonable expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility.
“Second, it carries an extreme impact. . .
“Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurance after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.”
Taleb, The Black Swan, p. xxii.
In October 2020 on my “Yo” website, I first introducted black swan theory. We were in the first year of the pandemic and the deadly delta virus was about to emerge. President Trump once again said that whether he would accept the upcoming presidential election results depended essentially on whether he won or lost. His answer was almost identical to his answer in 2016 to the same question. And, after all, how many people who win a race try to overturn the results? If an accused defendant is found not guilty by a jury of his peers, will he ask for a retrial or insist that the verdict be put aside? So, in 2020 in regards to President Trump, there was the potential of mischief spinning off in some other direction. I did not forsee the insurrection, however. By “insurrection,” I mean thousands of right wing demonstrators trashing the Capitol building with the intent of overthrowing the votes of the Electoral College and the People. Some demonstrators were completely harmless senior citizens with no specific agenda in mind except to gawk at the architecture or take pictures to send to the missus or their grandchildren, but they broke the law in any event just by being there unlawfully. Other demonstrators who in the distant past would have given their blood and very lives to protect and preserve that shrine of democracy, were now smashing windows, tearing doors off the hinges, and beating law enforcement officers without mercy, while shouting death threats to our elected leaders. A few were even constructing a gallows on the Capitol lawn. These insurrectionists had the presence of mind to bring 2×4’s, nails, hammers, saws, and stout rope. “O Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!“
At the same time in the Willard Hotel in Washington, there were conspiratorial efforts only fully revealed this past week to steal the victory from Joe Biden and the American people by crafting bogus slates of Republican electors pledged to Donald Trump and attempting to replace the duly elected delegates. Vice-President Mike Pence came under extreme duress to join this conspiracy, but fortunately for the republic, he did not. He acquitted himself handsomely and we should all be thankful for that.
January 6th was a black swan. It was the first time American citizens had attacked the capitol, because it was “outside the realm of reasonable expectations, because nothing in the past [could] convincingly point to its possibility.” It certainly carried an extreme impact and looking back, it comes as no surprize (so how did we not see the threat a month, even a week in advance?)
Looking back, however, nothing that the January 6th select committee has uncovered surprizes me. But, again, I have the advantage of hindsight, or Monday morning quarterbacking.
Taleb was developing his theory in terms of finance. We’ve had all sorts of statistical studies on relationships between grain commodities and equities, the futures market, and so on. But his theory has a broader application that I wish to bring out.
Ukraine: Do black swans flock together?
Vladimir Putin is intent on either assimilating or at the very least marginalizing, Ukraine. He has hinted at using nukes, but will he use them? At the moment, the nuclear option “lies outside the realm of reasonable expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility.” But what about tomorrow? More than half of the people in the world believe Putin is rational and that he will not use nuclear weapons because he knows that Russia will suffer equally devestating consequences. The rest of us secretly fear that he might.
Introducing nuclear weapons in a fight with NATO or the U.S. would definitely be have an “extreme impact,” at least as far as human history is concerned. Then again, if Putin uses a tactical nuclear warhead in Ukraine or blows out the lights in Oslo with an EMP created from a nuclear burst at very high altitude, we’d all admit that this was intuitively a concern that we grudgingly agreed was at least a remove possibility.
Ukraine is the world’s breadbasket. Will people in Angola or Mexico go hungry if Ukraine is ruthlessly obliterated and if the only harvest this year is death and carnage?
One of the richest deposits of manganese is found in Ukraine as well as titanium. Titanium is used on high performance planes and nuclear submarines. Can a war in Ukraine impact our readiness posture by denying the Air Force or Navy the critical raw materials needed to build aircraft and boats?
A note to my Christian brothers and sisters.
No doubt, the current events should excite you of the prospect that Jesus’ return is very close. I remember the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and as a young Christian, I called my friends to be sure they were “rapture ready.” More than likely, the believers almost a century ago during Mussolini and Hitler’s rise to power saw the parousia as only months, perhaps several years, away. And then World War II broke out. There was the Holocaust, but it wasn’t what John saw that day on Patmos. Next, there was the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, etc.
My point is this: Scripture allows for the possibility of dozens if not hundreds of wars to occur before the Second Coming, regardless of what John Nelson Darby might have thought: World War I, World War II, World War III, World War IV and so on. We, the Church in the U.S., may be facing some very difficult days ahead. I think we should hope for the best, but prepare for another scenario. I don’t claim to be a prophet like many people claim to be today. I’m just a plain, old, ordinary Christian. But we shouldn’t be afraid for the future, for God is with is, and if coming for us. That is our blessed hope in these perilous times.
