London Riots - A Black Swan Event

Despite any attempt to make sense of the recent unrest in London streets, I think we should admit that it had caught everyone by surprise. It had a great impact on many people - especially the victims of looters, muggers and rioters; and also to the police, and the UK government - that we all wonder why we didn't expect this to happen at all.


There was a time when the Europeans thought that black swans do not exist, as they had never seen one - until they 'discover' them in Australia.


Nassim Nicholas Taleb had a name for the unexpected, highly significant, retrospectively predictable event: the black swan. In his book, The Black Swan, he discussed the impact of the highly improbable; and since it pervades history, how are we to live with these uncertainties. It's futile, he said, to make predictions about the future, as we can never truly understand the full force of history.


However, we can try to account for all possible futures, but accept what then happen and admit our ignorance of its causes. Just remember that even those with the smallest probabilities can occur - and those that are most probable, do not necessarily happen. With that in mind, I think we can live our lives happily discovering the good surprises that come, and not get badly injured by the unpredictable harmful events as we are mindful of its possibility.


Who would have imagined that suddenly in many streets of London, groups of young 'rioters' go rogue - smashing windows, looting shops, and burning them down? Could we have anticipated the riots and prevented the unrest from getting to such a massive scale? Well, I think not. Maybe the police could have taken a stronger stance against the rioters; Maybe the kids could have been better educated and had better parenting; Maybe the government could have tackled poverty and social inequalities better. They didn't - but we should not be quick as to blame them on all that had happened.