Friday, May 6, 2011

More on black swan events


Today I had a procedure of tooth extraction and bone transplant.  so I am semi-functioning with stitches in my mouth for the next week.    The reasons for the fuel pollution that paralyzed all flights from Israel yesterday is still in investigation, so the event was not classified yet to black or white swan.  If it will be classified to a black swan event this will be a second instance of the same event within 5 years, so it is interesting if a second instance qualifies as a black swan.  


Some comments about my previous posting claimed that a black swan event cannot be predicted by definition, however event processing can act to decrease the damage and mitigate its outcomes,  maybe the consequences of the black swan events can be predicted and some action need to be taken.  I guess that one of the interesting applications of proactive computing is to deal with consequences of black swan events, and then monitor white swan events to track the progress towards or away from undesired consequences.    More on this topic - later.

1 comment:

david said...

Opher,
As I understand it, a Black Swan event is an event that cannot be predicted, is catastrophic, and has after the fact explanations.
"cannot be" and "was not" are different!
Now then, is there a test to decide if an event, once it has happened is a BSE?
For example, the recent Japanese Tsunami? Was that a BSE?
How about WWII? I would argue not.
But WWI? The inventor of BSE thinks yes, that was a BSE.