According to Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s definition, a black swan is a large-impact, hard-to-predict event that is beyond normal expectations. Taleb claims that almost all consequential events in history come from the high impact events. And yet, in a recent article, J. Richard Gott III claims that in thinking about the future, it’s best to assume that there is nothing special about the particular moment that you’re observing. Dr. Gott says that for on-going things (like Al Qaeda, or the Internet, or the US space program), the future can best be predicted on how long something has lasted already. He recently said that we need to get a colony up and running on Mars within 46 years in order to ensure human survival. If we don’t do it within 46 years, chances are (based on his method, which a lot of people take seriously) that we won’t do it.

These two ways of looking at history and the future seem a bit inconsistent, but that’s not necessarily the case. The world is shaped both by momentum and by big changes. Things go steady for a long time, and just when you think things will never change, BAM. The unexpected happens. Something reaches the tipping point (another book, by Malcolm Gladwell), and yesterday is irrelevant. Then the Gott approach begins anew. Evolution and revolution. Yin and yang. Yada and yada. I better stop here.