Ask a turkey a week before Thanksgiving if the farmer loves him.

The farmer comes every day to feed the turkey and feed him well.

He provides free accommodations: a nice yard to peck around in, water, shelter from predators.

From the turkey’s perspective, a week before Thanksgiving, life has never been better.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb explains “The Great Turkey Problem” in his book Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder.

     A turkey is fed for a thousand days by a butcher. Every day confirms to its staff of      analysts that butchers love turkeys, with increased statistical confidence. The            butcher will keep feeding the turkey until a few days before Thanksgiving. Then          comes the day when it is really not a very good idea to be a turkey.

    So with the butcher surprising it, the turkey will have a revision of belief, right              when its confidence in the statement that the butcher loves turkeys is maximal          and it is very quiet and soothingly predictable in the life of the turkey…

    The key here is that such a surprise will be a black swan event, but just for the          turkey, not for the butcher.

    We can also see from the turkey story the mother of all harmful mistakes.                  Mistaking absence of evidence of harm for evidence of absence…

    So our mission in life becomes simply, how not to be a turkey, or if possible, how        to be a turkey in reverse. Antifragile that is.

    Not being a turkey starts with figuring out the difference between true and                  manufactured stability.

A black swan event is an unexpected outlier event, difficult to predict because it is beyond the usual.