Black Swan

 

We know of swans as white. In Hinduism, it is accorded a special place as a "vaahan" (vehicle) for Goddess Saraswathi (goddess of learning and music). Most depictions of swans are as a white bird. It also symbolises purity of thought and action. Purity of the soul. Probably, 3000 years ago, white was the colour of purity and black the colour of "rakshas"... (Picture of white swan from here)


Europeans, too, thought there were only white swans in the world.  If someone wanted to signify an event which would have a very, very low probability of occurrence, he would say, "it will happen when I see a black swan". Things went swimmingly, until someone found black swans to be native of Australia and New Zealand sometime in the early 18th century, perhaps. The shock and surprise was complete. Black swans did not come with an adjective of high improbability. They were just not native to Europe, but not rare at all.

The consequences of such realizations have been the subject of a book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (more details here) and the title of his book is appropriately "The Black Swan, The Impact of the Highly Improbable". It has attracted the attention of people in Wall Street and academia who have come to recognize in this book the near impracticality of predicting "black swan events" - events that are extremely rare, but whose impact is far-reaching and probably global. (Image of black swan from here).

Extreme examples are 9/11 and the aftermath in terms of war, increased security, man-hunt and the changes that we see to this day - 11 years on. More recently, we had the Covid 19 pandemic that ravaged the world and killed millions within a very short time - probably of the scale of a world war. On the positive side, we have Internet, Google, mobile telecommunication (especially in India), and the rapid technological changes it has wrought in society and business as a result.

Could anyone have predicted these? There is someone who has, strangely. A futurologist called Ray Kurzweil (more here) who has been able to predict many "black swan" events with timelines. Among his predictions was the power of internet, wireless communication and internet access, nano-technology, and power of chess programs to routinely win against the best humans. His predictions are here.

Of interest to me is not these phenomena which are global. If there are black swan events on a global scale, can we not have black swan events at a country, province, district, village, or family level too? Events which are not foreseen, but which can have intense impact when it does happen. I can think of the 2004 tsunami which devastated many coastal towns and villages in Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Indonesia. For those villages and towns the event was a black swan event. Highly improbable, but with devastating consequences for life and savings. Tsunamis in the Pacific were the reasons for the advance warning systems that were established along the Pacific - from US through Hawaii upto Japan. But no one predicted that an Indian ocean tsunami could be so enormous - at least till Dec 26, 2004.

Without going through the country, state, province, district, and village levels for other examples, let me go to the black swan events that can rock a family. What do we say happens to Mr. Sushil Kumar who was the winner of the Rs. 5 crore jackpot prize during season 5 of the popular quiz show, Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) (inspired by the British show, Who wants to be a Millionaire)? A computer operator, whose monthly salary was 6,000 rupees. His life would have taken a totally different turn since winning the top prize in KBC 5. A black swan event in his family. On the positive side, no doubt. Coming to think of it, wasn't KBC itself a black swan event for Star Plus (now on Sony Entertainment Television) and for the career of Amitabh Bachchan, its host? 

At a personal level, illnesses and its consequent effect on the person can be a black swan event. I have had three of them in my life - each made an enormous impact in my life.

No, marriages are NOT black swan events in one's life - even though it changes one completely. You see, it is inevitable and you know you are going to "fall" into it. It is not in the category of "highly improbable".

 

IF.....

Reposted from another blog of mine that I do not access....at all. Just happened to visit that today and saw that the last blog of mine there was this one. Just copy-pasting that here without any edits.

This was published on October 2012. My family and I were living in Bangalore then.

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My wife and I need to meet our cousin who lives about 25 kms away. There are multiple routes to reach her place, and before we leave, we discuss the options. I feel going through the "ring road" is quicker since the roads are wider, and there are less signals to pass through. However, the route is longer by about 6 kms. The route via the city centre, though shorter, has more signals. Anyway, the options are only regarding which route takes longer. We don't want to be stuck on the road for a long time. No fun in that and with petrol prices at stratospheric levels, we cannot afford that too!

We choose the ring road, the over-riding reason being that I am driving the car. But we didn't contend with the traffic jam today. There are at least three places where the traffic is insane and at each place we spend almost 10 minutes navigating through 6 lanes of vehicles of all description crammed into three lanes of traffic, with motorbikes occupying all intervening spaces. With the stop-start-stop being the norm, my wife also starts the same "start commenting, stop commenting, start commenting". If you had listened to me, if you had driven through the city, if I had not finished dinner before leaving as you wanted me to, if...if...

How can wives know where the traffic will be lighter? Beats me. But during occasions such as these, they pretend they have a seventh sense (the sense to detect traffic jams).

We do tend to look back at various points in our lives to pause and reflect. If only I had prepared for my CAT more thoroughly, if I had applied for a US university, if I had not taken up my job at XYZ, if I had done this, if I had not done that...

In fights with my wife, we have said many things to each other including if we had not married each other. I have often thought of this, honestly..

Life is full of choices. We are confronted with this right from our school days, where our parents make the choices on behalf of us. They choose our schools and from there we form friendships and alliances and networks. These are some of the strongest influences in our lives. We remember many of our school friends even later on in life. Thanks to the internet and social networking sites, we can remain connected even when we are into our fifties. Later on when we move to higher classes, we need to make our own choices. The most important "fork in our life" comes when we move from X std. to junior college or Plus 1 or XI (depending on the board of education). Science, Arts, or commerce? PCMB or PCMC? Commerce with Economics and Statistics or Business studies? The decisions we take here determine the path along which we will travel for the rest of our lives. Oftentimes we consider ourselves too immature to take these decisions and leave them to our parents to decide. The more "mature" ones have even "maturer parents" who want their kids to take a particular course. Entrance exams, colleges, courses, jobs... and the list goes on probably culminating in "choosing" the life partner.

"I think Arup (name changed) should have taken metallurgy in NIT Jaipur instead of studying electrical engineering in a Bangalore college. You (this to her husband) told us then when we went for counselling that Arup need not go to Jaipur. The college is not so good. But now Lalitha's son, Prashanth, has completed B.E. Computer science from NIT Jaipur and has got admission in a US University. If only Arup had joined NIT Jaipur...."

It is comforting to live in the past and examine each decision and choice with the benefit of hindsight (which has 20/20 vision) and then find fault with one's own choice or with the choice of the partners. In my opinion, this is wishful thinking and doesn't take us anywhere. You cannot drive a car constantly looking at your rear view mirror. You only look at it occasionally to see what is behind you. Drive looking ahead.

Leave the "ifs" in the realm of flowcharting where it truly belongs. You need to ask yourself many questions starting with "if" while flowcharting, to understand the various choices people in the process make. What do you do if the invoice doesn't have the PAN number of the supplier? What will you do if there is no budget this year for the item indented, but it is a critical item needed now? Ask innumerable questions with IF at each stage of your process while creating your flowchart for the process that you are studying to determine what actions people take under various situations. 

However, do not live your life with an IF.