Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Noun Phrase 162. The noun phrase today is
Black Swan or we sometimes we say a Black Swan event. Okay. Let's take a look
at the note here. Often when we hear someone talk about a Black Swan,
especially in business or investment news networks, they are usually referring
to a Black Swan event. Okay. A Black Swan event is one in which it is very
unpredictable that seems to come out of nowhere and has a very severe
consequence. A Black Swan could also have the meaning of something rare or very
rare. The origin of the phrase dates back to the second century. It comes from the
Roman poet named Juvenal who was trying to characterize something being rare.
Here is the actual quote "Rara avis in Terris Negro que similia cyngo. " Okay.
That was in Latin. This translated to " A rare bird in the lands and very much
like a Black Swan.' Ironically, at this time most people believed there was no
such thing as a Black Swan because all previous records recorded swans
as white. So nobody had ever seen a Black Swan or at least not in Rome anyway. Even
up to the 16th century, this quote was used to state that something was
impossible. So it was used because everybody believed there was no such
thing as a black swan. Okay. Let's continue. Okay. Good.
However in the year 1697 , Dutch explorer, William de
Vlamingh. I don't know. Documented seeing black swans in Western Australia.
So there is actually a species of black swans that do come from Australia. The
term then came to mean that something believed to be impossible might be
disproven in the future. Yeah. It's kind of an ironic turn. All right. Let's continue. The
term Black Swan event came about due to author Nasim Nicholas Taleb in his book
"Fooled by Randomness" in 2001. In 2007 he popularized the term more in his book
called "The Black Swan. " The same name. Now the term is used to refer to any
unpredictable event that has a high impact and is rationalized about later.
Okay. Let's continue. All right. Now and we just have a couple of examples here.
Example number one. Yeah. Some economists fear that the corona virus
could be the black swan that crashes the world's financial system. Yeah . A number of
people have predicted a crash of the world's financial system like ever since
2008 . Because the world is filled with way too much debt, but they said that you know it
probably wouldn't be something that you kind of see because you know probably
central banks and politicians will try to do something to stop that. What we
really bring it down is something that's by surprise. Some Black Swan that they
don't see coming and it just makes the whole thing collapse. So that's what
they've often talked about. So you often hear of the Black Swan used in that way.
And let's just give the second example here. Yeah. Nasim Nicholas Taleb you know,
the guy that wrote the book gives examples of black swans such as 9/11 or
the 9/11 attacks. You know, because that would have been maybe not so predictable.
The collapse of the Soviet Union, World War 1 etc. So
these are ones where he's saying were you know something could just come up
out of nowhere. You don't expect it. It coud have a great impact and that's
why they said you know , even one that you forecast ... you can never know if some
Black Swan could come out of nowhere and change everything. Okay. Anyway, I hope you
got it. I hope it was informative. Thank you for your time.
Bye-bye.