The 'Black Swan Theory' of human development was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to better explain the role of "freaky" randomness in history and science. Not just 'improbability' but utter unpredictability on one level, yet with the kind of hidden influences that makes it stochastic instead of pure randomness.
Taleb, rephrasing David Hume sez: the observation of even a million white swans does not justify the statement that "all swans are white." And if you are from 'down-under', for example, you might have thought most were black. The main points of 'Black Swan Theory' (Wiki): 1. The disproportionate role of high-impact, hard to predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance and technology 2. The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities) 3. The psychological biases that make people individually and collectively blind to uncertainty and unaware of the massive role of the rare event in historical affairs Randomness, of a special kind, plays a big part in these paradigm shifts, in the course of history. Physicists, especially at the PhD level, are exceedingly prone to the falling into the 'black swan' logical error in their thinking process, since they want to believe in the power of predictability, based on known facts and slight natural divergence. They simply cannot grasp that major and unpredictable divergence exists from what is known and that it is often the most important factor of all. Unfortunately, in analyzing most 'astounding' claims - they are often correct, and Bob Park can be up to 99% correct in spurts, since they only attack the weakest claims. They absolutely dread what is happening now in Bologna - to be exposed as completely wrong on the most important new development of their lifetime. This is why the Parks and Garwins of the world can be so dangerous to society in the final analysis - and yes, Park may have been a 'net negative' voice to the general public for all of these years for failing to take notice of the original 'black swan' back in 1989, despite being right most of the time otherwise. When the err, they can set back real progress by decades. Shame on you! . and you know who you are, so it is not necessary to name more names. Redemption is still possible. Progress, according to Taleb, absolutely depends on the occasional black swan - which is what we can call the "Goodyear moment" since it recognizes that accidental moments in science can be far more productive than the best-laid plans of mice and men. But they are not truly accidental either, yet I will save my 'what is stochastic?' rant for another time and place. Jones
