202109251200 Black swan risk
Black swan risk is the risk of something unlikely, but catastrophically bad happening.1 For example, if we're designing a bridge, a black swan risk scenario could be "what happens if there's a tornado and an earthquake at the same time"?
We must be creative and think outside the box while coming up with black swan risks in order to try and expand our thinking about a situation. Once we've come up with many scenarios like this, we need to take the time to assess their likelihood as a whole, but also whether there are themes or elements of these scenarios that are more likely to happen than the exact scenario. This can be a tool for finding gaps in our more realistic risk assessment.
Thinking like this can let us decide rationally — instead of out of emotion, bias, or ignorance — how much risk we're OK with and what the worst case outcome could be.
-
Wikipedia contributors. (2022). Black swan theory. In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Black_swan_theory&oldid=1084569215 ↩