Theory of Black Swan

Hey there, fellow seekers of the quirky and unexpected! Picture this: a cozy evening, me diving into a book, thinking I'll have a relaxed reading session. Little did I know, I was about to stumble upon a riddle that would give the Sphinx a run for its money!

So, there I am, flipping through the pages, and I come across this hypothetical conversation with an author. And let me tell you, it's like a rollercoaster ride through the wild world of numbers. You won't believe the twists and turns!

Author: "I have a rule in my mind for a sequence of numbers. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to crack that code."

How exciting, right? The author's got a secret number sequence, and I'm the code-breaking detective!

Author: "Here, check this out: 2, 4, 8."

Ashu: "Got it, mate. How about 16, 32, 64?"

Author: "You're on the right track!"

Ashu: "Aha, it's all about multiples of 2, isn't it?"

Author: "Nope, try again."

And the guessing game goes on! I'm throwing numbers around like confetti at a birthday party, hoping something will stick.

Ashu: "10, 12, 14."

Author: "Bingo! It follows my rule."

Ashu: "So, it's a sequence of even numbers, right?"

Author: "Nope, try again."

And the plot thickens! I'm throwing numbers like a chef tossing a pizza in the air.

Ashu: "10, 12, 16."

Author: "Nailed it! It follows my rule."

Ashu: "Is it like, you add 2 to the last number and skip the middle one?"

Author: "Nope, not quite."

I'm getting desperate. I'm throwing random numbers faster than a monkey typing Shakespeare!

Ashu: "10, 11, 12."

Author: "That works!"

Ashu: "1, 2, 3."

Author: "You got it!"

After multiple attempts, I'm beginning to think the rule might involve telepathy or mind-reading.

Ashu: "9, 2, 3."

Author: "Nope, doesn't follow my rule."

And then, like a thunderbolt from the clear blue sky, it hits me. The rule must be 'any three numbers in ascending order.' Aha!

In the midst of this numerical rollercoaster, I couldn't help but think of the 'Black Swan' theory. You know, back in the day, people thought black swans didn't exist because all they'd ever seen were white ones. But then, surprise! Black swans turned up in Australia. So, now 'Black Swan' is used to describe events beyond the ordinary.

And here I was, in my little number-guessing adventure, pulling a 'Black Swan' of my own by guessing a rule that was totally out of the box.

Taleb (the Author): "I don't particularly care about the usual. If you want to get an idea of a friend's temperament, ethics, and personal elegance, you need to look at him under the tests of severe circumstances, not under the regular rosy glow of daily life. Can you assess the danger a criminal poses by examining only what he does on an ordinary day? Can we understand health without considering wild diseases and epidemics? Indeed the normal is often irrelevant. Almost everything in social life is produced by rare but consequential shocks and jumps; all the while almost everything studied about social life focuses on the 'normal,' particularly with 'bell curve' methods of inference that tell you close to nothing. Why? Because the bell curve ignores large deviations, cannot handle them, yet makes us confident that we have tamed uncertainty. Its nickname in this book is GIF, Great Intellectual Fraud."

You said it, Taleb! Sometimes, it's the oddball cases that teach us the most. In software development, I usually test the scenarios I think should work. But it's the 'Black Swans' from production that often teach us the most valuable lessons!

So there you have it, folks! Not all is as it seems, and sometimes, the quirkiest, most unexpected things hold the key to our understanding of the world. Keep an eye out for those 'Black Swans' in your life, and don't forget to look beyond the usual when you're cracking those enigmatic number sequences or solving real-world problems!