The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Taleb opens this chapter with an illustration of confirmation bias. He asks the reader to imagine him saying that he believed O.J. Simpson to be innocent, since, after an imagined afternoon with him, he didn't see O.J. kill a single person. Taleb illustrates that we often rely on our own personal observations to confirm or deny what we believe is possible. According to Taleb, this tendency to rely on our chosen narratives is natural to human nature. This often results in overlooking or misunderstanding Black Swans.

In our efforts to corroborate our own narratives, we misrepresent the truth about how the world works, which is more like Extremistan than Mediocristan. Within the fields of mathematics and science, Taleb argues that "even in testing a hypothesis, we tend to look for instances where the hypothesis proved true" (56). This chapter explores the tension between confirmation bias and objective analysis. Furthermore, this tension invites another major theme: the true nature of humanity. Taleb argues that "sadly, the notion of corroboration is rooted in our intellectual habits and discourse" (59). When you combine our collective tendency to corroborate our previously held beliefs with the logical fallacy of our confirmation biases, objective analysis of past and current events is rendered ineffective, hindering our ability to make reasonable forecasts about the future.