Using the example of a black swan that people living in the Northern Hemisphere did not believe existed simply because all the swans they had seen until that point had been white in color, Taleb illustrates how the sighting of a single black swan in Australia proved centuries of common belief to be wrong. Fooled by Randomness is a must read book to understand the impact of random events in our (investing) lives but it can also sometimes leave you with an unsatisfactory feeling as it attributes most of the success people have to luck rather than skill. If you have not read Fooled by Randomness or Taleb’s follow on book Black Swan, I would recommend reading the former and skipping the latter, as it mostly rehashes what was already covered in a much more entertaining fashion in Fooled by Randomness.
Speaking of black swans, I was a little taken aback when I encountered one at a hotel in Napa Valley, California.