The turkey and the butcher

Just wanted to get this little ditty out:

I was listening to a very interesting Long Now seminar by Nassim Taleb, about his insight into randomness, predictability, and the like.

If you don't know who he is, Taleb wrote a very popular book called 'The Black Swan', which takes it title from an old English saying that equated something impossible with seeing a black swan. Well, that saying got messed up when black swans were seen in Australia in the 18th century.

A great anecdote, created by his brother, he brought up to illustrate the overall point of the 'black swan' was the story about the turkey and the butcher.

Basically, the turkey views the butcher as this benevolent person, who constantly attends to the well-being of the turkey. And when the butcher comes one day to kill him, the turkey is astounded at the unpredictability of the butcher's behavior. Of course, to the butcher, it was all very predictable. Down to the chop.

Moral of the story: You can't always predict things based on past trends.

Corollary (for me at least): There are views that do make these 'black swans', these amazingly unpredictable events, predictable.

One other thing he mentioned that keeps me thinking and ties to the Long Now perspective is about the wisdom of old folks being a resource in how to deal with black swan moments. Hm...