Terrorism is a black swan (rare high impact) event.
You are misusing the term. Black swans are not rare high-impact events—they are events that nobody has considered possible. The original black swan—finding black swans in Australia—certainly wasn’t a high-impact event.
Consider attempting to estimate the danger of asteroid impacts or rogue AIs by looking at the last several millennia of data, terrorism has a similar problem.
I disagree. Terrorism has been a constant presence throughout human history. It’s not rare, at all. There is lots of historical data.
EDIT: I was wrong. Taleb actually defines black swans (at the beginning of The Black Swan book) as outlier events that have three characteristics: (1) rare; (2) high-impact; (3) not foreseen but back-explained in hindsight.
You are misusing the term. Black swans are not rare high-impact events—they are events that nobody has considered possible. The original black swan—finding black swans in Australia—certainly wasn’t a high-impact event.
I disagree. Terrorism has been a constant presence throughout human history. It’s not rare, at all. There is lots of historical data.
EDIT: I was wrong. Taleb actually defines black swans (at the beginning of The Black Swan book) as outlier events that have three characteristics: (1) rare; (2) high-impact; (3) not foreseen but back-explained in hindsight.
I’m using Taleb’s definition.
Most of which the people who try to compare it statistically to falling of ladders tend to ignore.