Comment by tyre

Comment by tyre 5 hours ago

6 replies

Covid was a black swan event. Unless we see something like the MBS collapse, the underlying economic weakness isn’t due to a such an acute root cause.

Not sure how comparable they are.

mtsr 3 hours ago

I know it’s not popular to bring politics into things on HN, but… From the outside at least, White House policy sounds like at least as much of a black swan event as COVID.

  • [removed] 3 hours ago
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  • watwut an hour ago

    Black swan event should be unexpected. Trumps victory was within expected possibilities. It was also his second victory.

    And his moves after winning were not unexpected either - he is doing what his opponents predicted he will do.

    • littlestymaar 38 minutes ago

      A coronavirus causing a global pandemic at some point was even more expected though.

      And even the erratic government reactions to the pandemic was not entirely unpredictable either to be fair.

    • intended 27 minutes ago

      True. It must be added, that theres two wrenches in the machinery that transforms information into action currently.

      Firstly - The average market behavior is average.

      From experience, most people could not imagine anything of what was predicted, would come true. There is a large … debt of intellectual work that is being underwritten, allowing people to sell narratives which do not correspond to reality.

      This is a direct result of a captured, unfair information environment.

      As a result, the average behavior of the market is not pricing in these things, even if the plans were made clear.

littlestymaar 39 minutes ago

> Covid was a black swan event

I beg to differ. Epidemiologists and public health planners always knew such a pandemic would happen eventually. In fact, it wasn't even surprising that it came from a coronavirus as this virus group was the most likely contender with the influenza family.

The only open question was when. We dodged the bullet several times over the past two decades with SRAS, H5N1, MERS and H1N1 (notice, two influenza and two coronaviruses), but one virus slipping through was definitely the most likely outcome.

And I can confidently tell you: it will happen again.