Jul 22, 2015

The Black Swan

The black swan is a metaphor for the unknown and the unexpected.  In the old world, the theory was that all swans were white.  So each instance of a white swan would make them think to themselves "Yeah, that theory's pretty good."

But the point is that you can never prove a theory true.  And in fact, when those people found Australia, they realized that there were black swans.

[Everyone interviewed for the experiment would propose something that they thought to be true and then would work to find evidence to support it... but what you should really seek is to find something to negate your belief because provides a lot more information]

If you really believe something, you should try as hard as you can to disprove it.  And its when you can't disprove it that we can say "this must be getting at something really true about our reality." Only then can you get at the Truth and not fool yourself.


{{ That monologue was paraphrased from Veritasium.  They are a great YouTube Channel about science that I encourage you all to subscribe to if you are interested in learning interesting new things about our universe.  Enjoy! }}


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