2010 Bring Black Swans Into Your Career Circle.

The real meaning of the "black swan" theory is that when the "black swan" incident occurs, you are ready, and this mental preparation is more important and effective than any other material preparation.

The future is always unpredictable, but everyone wants to know something more or less, so that he can prepare for the rainy day. This is why the ancient mysticism profession of the East Fortune Telling and Western astrology has been incense constantly.

However, if you are willing to read Taleb's black swan, maybe the future will not be so mysterious and unpredictable to you.

Before the discovery of black swans in Australia, Europeans thought all swans were white, and there was no black swan in the world at all.

Taleb wants to use this easy to understand example to illustrate the limitations and weakness of knowledge acquired by observation or experience.

Because people are accustomed to adopting such stereotyped thinking, people will naturally label them as "unpredictable" once they fail to meet expectations in the future.

A turkey fed every day makes it more convinced that the general rule of life is to get a friendly human feeding every day, until the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving, an unexpected but vital thing happens to him.

This led to Turkey's disruptive faith reversal, but it was too late.

People are sometimes like this turkey. Although the danger of being slaughtered is getting closer and closer, they feel more and more secure.

Certain knowledge, skills, and judgments have always worked in the past, and until it unexpectedly did not work again, we found out afterwards that it was a dangerous misleading.

At present, the global financial crisis is sweeping away, and the global market is full of sadness.

This is what Taleb calls the "black swan" incident.

Taleb himself, because of his subtle grasp of the "black swan theory", has long been short of money and made a fortune. The most legendary one is his investment performance before and after the "9 11" incident.

One day before "9. 11", a friend of Taleb came to visit him.

This friend is a master of mathematical analysis. When he heard about Taleb's portfolio, he was amazed and said, "Taleb, unless an airplane hits our office building, your investment will be a chronic suicide."

This friend's office is the world trade center of New York.

When terrorists really hijacked the plane and crashed into the world trade center, Taleb's company, of course, made an astonishing profit.

Why can Taleb see the black swans that others can't see?

This has something to do with his background and experience.

Taleb's grandfather and great grandfather once served as deputy prime ministers of Lebanon, but his family experienced a sudden change from overnight to extreme poverty. This is the first black swan to fly into the life of the tower.

The cruel reality triggered his deep thinking, and Taleb's interest turned to study luck, uncertainty and probability.

Taleb divided the world into two parts: average Stan and extreme Stan.

Height, weight, calorie intake, bakers and restaurant owners' income, traffic accidents and mortality were controlled by average Stan; wealth, celebrity popularity, Google search volume, earthquake losses, terrorist deaths, financial markets, commodity prices, inflation rate and so on belong to the category of extreme Stan.

On average, we are governed by collective events, conventional events, known events and predicted events; in extreme stern, we are governed by single events, accidents, unknown events and unforeseen events.

Under the influence of extreme Stan, events that are not very frequent and very seldom happen (small probability events) sometimes affect the world, and it throws a black swan after countless white swans.

But in our psychological paradigm, we ignore the existence of extreme Stan.

We tend to erroneously regard the naive observation of the past as something definite or represent the future. This is the only reason why we can not grasp the phenomenon of "Black Swans".

In the summer of 1982, big banks in the us almost lost all their accumulated profits in the past.

They have been providing loans to South America and Central American countries, while the latter default at the same time.

Such events are again staged 10 years later. After the collapse of the real estate market in the early 1990s, the savings and loan industry that no longer exists requires taxpayers to bear more than $500 billion in relief funds.

Those "risk conscious" big banks are once again on the verge of bankruptcy.

Although the Fed eventually protected them, it spent taxpayers' money.

How similar is this scene to today's financial crisis.

From this perspective, is the future unpredictable?

There are pitfalls in any knowledge gained from observation.

We must learn how to move from a specific case to a general conclusion. We must know how our observations can infer other characteristics of objects and events.

So how do we predict the future and deal with small probability events?

In fact, we can not give unrealistic expectations to the "black swan theory".

"Black swan" theory can not tell you exactly when "black swan" will appear in what way.

It just tells you that, although all your current horizons are "white swan", "black swan" is bound to appear.

With this in mind, when the "black swan" incident really appears, you have already had the opportunity to get ahead of others, and you are ready for it. This preparation, psychological calm, and being calm are more important and effective than any other material preparation.

Taleb told us from his experience (though he himself accurately predicted and captured the gift of the black swan event): do not try to accurately predict the "black swan" incident, which is likely to make you more vulnerable to the effects that you did not predict.

Taleb emphasized: "I will never know the unknown, because by definition, it is unknown.

But I can always guess how it will affect me, and I should make my own decisions based on this. "

It is feasible to divide the black swan event into two parts.

When you may be affected by the positive "black swan" incident, you can take a very risky approach.

And when you may be affected by the negative "black swan" incident, you must take a very conservative approach.

Following these principles will enable you to benefit from the "black swan" incident.

Conversely, if the above principles deviate from the above principles, then the "black swan" incident can also make you suffer heavy losses.

Psychologically, the tower is still a bit far away from us. Let's take a look at the most famous "black swan event" in Chinese history, which is well known to all.

This is "burning Chibi".

Liu Bei and Sun Quan joined forces against Cao Cao and prepared to use fire attack against Cao Cao's armada.

But in the middle of the winter, the north wind is blowing. Cao Cao's burning on the north bank is only Liu Sun himself.

Zhu Geliang alone predicted that there would be an easterly wind (no one else predicted this small probability event).

Finally, the "black swan" - Dongfeng really came, Cao Cao was burned to death, and Liu Bei made a huge profit, thus laying the foundation for three points of the world.

In the past, everything Zhu Geliang did was a risky move, but after all, it was all reasonable.

This is the mystery of the black swan.

But it was also Zhu Geliang who, when he was preparing to remove the number one enemy Sima Yi and his son from the top of the valley, ignored the possibility of a small probability event.

A heavy rain put out the fire.

Sima Yi and his son ran away, and Zhu Geliang could only sigh in excess.

The theory of "black swan" does not make you a prophet of Zhu Geliang (even he himself can't do all kinds of things). Its real value is not to ignore the existence of "Black Swans", to let "Black Swans" fly into your brain and let them occupy a place in your thinking and decision-making.