Prof Joe Goldblatt : Black Swan Theory

Planned Events and the Next Enlightenment Inaugural Professorial Lecture by Professor Joe Goldblatt 9, March 2010. Professor Joe Goldblatt described five major forces and trends that may positively impact on Scotland's ability to develop and delivery world class events and produce what he describes as "the next era of the Scottish enlightenment".

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[iriesoldjahs]

Individual events are what matter for us, not trends. I.e. never cross a river with the average depth of 4ft because you wont live to tell us about it. The general trend (the river is on average 4ft deep) doesnt matter. What REALLY matters is the event (the deepest point)

[iriesoldjahs]

Extremeness/Impact of an event correlates to the size of the sample. So you would expect to see much larger and destructive earth quakes in planet three times the size of Earth (given it shared the same characteristics) although, most earthquakes would fall within normal range. However, outliers( the few really severe earthquakes) would be disproportionally more significant/destructive

the impact of a rare event increases EXPONENTIALLY not proportionally to size of a given the system. 

[iriesoldjahs]

So we could safely say the possibility of landing in a vietnam or WWI is relatively low. However because you have to assess risk by POSSIBILITY OF OCCURRENCE X THE IMPACT. This would make you assess going to war more carefully. The impact of an event matters when doing probability calculations ( A one and a thousand chance of losing 100 dollars is much different than a one and a thousand chance of losing 1,000,000 dollars)

[iriesoldjahs]

A black swan is a unforeseen statistical outlier in a power law distribution. The majority of occurrences in power law distrubution are high frequency low impact events. Earth quakes, wars, terrorist attacks all follow these distributions. So- earth quakes think tremors-- wars think skirmishes. But because we have to judge risk by probability of occurrence X impact (event).

[spinefex]

@iriesoldjahs Are you assuming that wars are an accidental occurrence that are unplanned? Even the strike on Baghdad came with a pre warning to Saddam.

[spinefex]

@iriesoldjahs Sept 11 was indeed a black swan event.

[iriesoldjahs]

@spinefex wars are not predictable even with over-whelming firepower and force.. Afghanistan (USSR and USA) Vietnam, there's a long list

[iriesoldjahs]

@spinefex the im pretty sure it was the 1880's

[iriesoldjahs]

@spinefex SEPT 11 is the EXACT definition of a black swan event...

[chickenmansenshi]

@iriesoldjahs Joe Goldblatt IS my hobby; he's great! I'm just trying to help.