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SG - good points.

1. I think the assertion is not useless if you can use it to at least know that things outside of your model "can" happen. He mainly is bashing bell curve enthusiasts who misapply it to social science situations and economics.

2. I think he used this as an example because it was outside of the realm of possibilities from their perspective.

But yeah, there are some fascinating chapters in this book. And his style of writing is quite funny and witty. Not to mention a lot of the book makes you think and will change the way you look at the world (at least a little).

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1. I guess his point is that events that disrupt the day-to-day equilibrium that we create (or anticipate) will have an effect that is tremendously more significant than their relative likelihood. That I'll buy. I'm just not buying the claim that our day-to-day details are irrelevant in the face of those possibilities.

2. I picked up on this example precisely because it's the one historical subject I may have an edge against the author on (having done a theme paper on it in HS [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] ). The French had no idea of the scope of the Nazi war machine and I believe in retrospect the Germans could have punched through the Maginot line with very few casualties and beat the French army in a race to Paris in any event. I don't know what the highest levels of French intelligence knew at that time, but I suspect neither does he. That's what makes this a poor example.

The 9/11 example of airline security is the one that seems to fit his thesis the best. Since the airlines already had many security measures in place to prevent terrorism, they could haven taken a few more simple steps to prevent the 9/11 attacks. The didn't take them because they didn't anticipate the possibility of a 9/11 style attack, or felt that it was too unlikely to worry about.

Still it is a fascinating concept. In 2p2 terms, just ask Greg Raymer or Joe Hachem about the impact of a Black Swan.