If You're Looking for "Black Swan Events" You'll Never Find Them

A true black swan isn't just unlikely; it's something that exists outside our prevailing model of reality.

Before Europeans encountered Australian swans, "black swan" was literally synonymous with impossibility. The shock wasn't statistical rarity but categorical impossibility suddenly becoming real. Taleb's point was precisely that we're blind to entire dimensions of risk because our frameworks exclude them from consideration.

When financial commentators compile lists of "potential black swans," they're performing an almost comedic self-contradiction. They're essentially saying: "Here are the things we can't anticipate that we're now anticipating."

This suggests the concept has been domesticated into meaning merely "really bad thing we hope won't happen."

The real black swans remain the ones we're not talking about, often because they involve assumptions so foundational we can't even articulate them.

And yet this “domestication” of ideas, theories or principles happens all the time. By definition, we can’t "warn" about black swans because they are, by definition, unforeseeable. 

But the watering down or domestication of any principle, theorem or idea seems to be irresistible. 

Original Concept	Original Meaning	How It Gets Misapplied
Occam's Razor	Among competing hypotheses with equal explanatory power, prefer the one with fewer assumptions	Used to dismiss complex explanations simply because they're complex, or to justify intellectual laziness ("the simplest answer is usually right")
Gaslighting	A systematic psychological manipulation tactic to make someone doubt their own sanity and perception of reality	Now applied to any disagreement, misremembering, or different perspective ("You're gaslighting me by saying that didn't happen!")
Kafka-esque	The nightmarish absurdity of faceless bureaucracy stripping individuals of agency and meaning	Used to describe any mildly frustrating paperwork or administrative delay
Orwellian	Totalitarian manipulation of language and reality to control thought itself	Applied to any government action someone dislikes, any surveillance, or even just opposing political views
Strawman Fallacy	Misrepresenting someone's actual argument to make it easier to attack	Now weaponized to shut down any paraphrasing or summary ("That's a strawman!") even when it accurately captures the position
Cognitive Dissonance	The psychological discomfort of holding contradictory beliefs simultaneously, which motivates attitude change	Used as a gotcha accusation meaning "you're being hypocritical" without the internal discomfort component
Dunning-Kruger Effect	The least competent people lack the metacognitive ability to recognize their incompetence	Simplified to "stupid people think they're smart" and used as a general- purpose insult, often by people demonstrating the effect themselves
Narcissism/Narcissistic Personality Disorder	A specific clinical personality disorder involving grandiosity, lack of empathy, and fragile self- esteem	Applied casually to anyone who seems selfish, takes selfies, or displays confidence
Correlation vs. Causation	Statistical correlation between variables doesn't prove one causes the other	Used reflexively to dismiss any suggested causal relationship, even well-supported ones, as if correlation can never suggest causation
Schrödinger's Cat	A thought experiment about quantum superposition and measurement problems in quantum mechanics	Misused to mean "we don't know the answer until we check" about any unknown situation
The Butterfly Effect	Sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaotic systems	Watered down to "everything affects everything" or used to justify magical thinking about tiny actions having massive predetermined effects
Stockholm Syndrome	Psychological response where hostages develop positive feelings toward captors as a survival mechanism	Applied to any situation where someone defends an institution or person that others think is harming them
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle	Fundamental quantum limitation on simultaneously measuring position and momentum	Misapplied to mean "observing something changes it" in any context, or that all knowledge is inherently uncertain
Gaslighting (worth repeating)	Deliberate, systematic psychological abuse to make victims question reality	Reduced to mean "lying," "disagreeing," or "remembering differently"
Devil's Advocate	Formally arguing against a position to test its strength, even if you agree with it	Now means "let me say something offensive without consequences" or "I'm about to be contrarian for attention"
Virtue Signaling	Publicly expressing opinions to demonstrate moral superiority without genuine commitment	Extended to dismiss any public expression of values, making authentic moral discourse impossible
Paradigm Shift (Kuhn)	Fundamental transformation in scientific worldview that makes old and new frameworks incommensurable	Applied to any minor change in approach or trending topic ("a paradigm shift in coffee brewing")
Thought Experiment	Rigorous hypothetical scenarios designed to isolate variables and test philosophical principles	Used for any random "what if" speculation without intellectual rigor
Echo Chamber	Self-reinforcing information environments that completely exclude contrary views	Applied to any community of people who largely agree, even ones that regularly engage with outside perspectives
Moving the Goalposts	Changing standards of evidence after they've been met to avoid conceding a point	Invoked whenever someone refines or adds nuance to an argument during discussion