Background
A few years ago, I bought a book by the Lebanese statistician / ex-options trader Nassim Taleb, called "The Black Swan". Some of you Apes may have heard of it, because it became a best seller a little after the Lehman Shock. The book was published in 2007, but seemed to predict (or at least anticipate the possibility of) the events that happened the following year and beyond. Given everything that has occurred over the last 1.5 years, I started to read the book again the other day, after years of it gathering dust in my book cabinet.
The Existence of Black Swans
The origin of the term "Black Swan" is in fact about two thousand years old, from Ancient Rome. It refers to the improbability of there being black feathered swans in the world, and likens this to the possibility that any system of thought - especially those currently taken for granted - could be suddenly undone by an unforeseen event that disproves it.
One way to think of it is that no-one really believes in the Loch Ness Monster any more. But what if a freshly deceased body of such a creature gets washed up on the shores of the Loch tomorrow? We would all have no choice but to fundamentally change our conceived beliefs about many things, particularly the natural sciences of course, in that case.
And so it was for aeons about black swans, with the conceived notion in Europe that there could be none of these particular creatures existing in this world. But to their immense surprise, this improbability suddenly became defunct in an instant, when they were actually "discovered" in Western Australia in the late 17th century. No doubt the local Aboriginal Australians were just as surprised, seeing how surprised these Dutch explorers looked when encountering the common birds...
Black Swan Theory
So the theory is that sometimes events happen, that are almost unbelievably shocking in both their impact and for the fact that they could not be predicted beforehand. Nothing like it has happened in (at least) living memory and no-one alive could even consider it could actually occur. The more detailed definition that Taleb gives in the book is as follows:
"What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes.
*First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme 'impact'. Third, in spite of its o
... keep reading on reddit ➡I just got around to watching Black Swan for the first time -- it totally lived up to expectations.
But I finished the film and immediately had a theory that, surprisingly, I can't find described anywhere.
I saw nothing occur in the film that would disprove the idea that Nina's mom is actually dead, and Nina is simply hallucinating her. We hear the mom crying in the apartment before we see her, in a couple of scenes I believe, and I kept expecting throughout that we would find Erica dead in the apartment at some point, when Nina calls out to her and looks for her several times. Also, in the scene where Nina is startled to find her mother asleep in her bedroom one morning, the way she is laying on the chair looked like she was dead, which I thought might be a signal to the audience that she was actually not alive.
Much like Lily is hallucinated to represent the dark side of Nina throughout, could hallucinations of Erica serve a similar purpose? Erica yells to Nina that she is not well when she leaves for the performance towards the end of the film. Is that actually Nina's self trying to break through the mental illness? The way her mother controls her and monitors her throughout -- could that be Nina's embodied vision of her own self restraint and perfectionism? When she breaks Erica's hand, it could be Nina trying to break free. Perhaps Erica controlled Nina as a child, but now, living in the apartment she used to share with her mother, filled with her infantilising childhood bedroom and the unsettling paintings by her late mother (who could also have potentially been unwell), Nina continues to see her mother due to her mental illness.
If we follow this theory, it would mean that Nina has been losing touch with reality from the very first moments of the film, when she talks with her mother after her dream. The way Nina barricades her door against Erica and fights against her mother's constraints could be indicative of her building paranoia, and could represent the struggle between sanity and mental illness. When we see Nina's phone ring with "mom" on the caller ID, the moments in which this occurs are moments when Nina is moving into more chaotic, dangerous territory -- like before she thinks she sees herself walking towards her for the first time on the street, or when she is deciding to take molly. So seeing the call pop up could be something within her putting up a red flag, trying to break through the loss of reality and regain control as she is sp
... keep reading on reddit ➡
So, I recently watched Black Swan (yes, I'm late but better late than never) and I have a theory to discuss. I'm sure it's been discussed and theorized before so pardon if it's annoying.
About the ending, I'm on the she-died team. Let me explain.
Shortly put - in the actual Swan Lake story, White Swan commits suicide when she sees the prince is with Black Swan, when as a matter of fact the prince mistook Black Swan for White Swan. I can't remember who but someone tells this part to Nina, too, subtly foreshadowing Nina's fate.
Her fall during the performance was the final nail in the coffin. Following that, she considers herself rejected forever and believes it's all over for her. So, she goes to the washroom, stabs herself there, believing she killed Lily. Her next performance as Black Swan we see is just she hallucinating her own transcendence from White to Black Swan. In reality, she never left the washroom and was actually lying there, dying. I say this because logically speaking there's no way you can go perform in a ballet having a piece of shattered glass stabbed in your stomach. The scene where she returns to the washroom and doesn't find Lily's body is actually her little dive back into reality where she realizes she stabbed herself. Lily congratulating her, she going back to the stage as Black Swan and pleasing Leroy with her performance is just a depiction of things she always wanted deep inside, none of this actually happens. By the end of her 'performance' where they notice her wound doesn't actually happen on the stage - again it's just running in her mind - in fact, they all find her in the washroom as she dies, believing her transcendence was finally "perfect."
This is also a parallel made with White Swan; White Swan and Nina both committed suicide, believing they were not good enough and wishing they transcended successfully into Black Swan.
So, does this theory have some weight? Yay or nay?
I saw someone on here that had suggested in a comment that the bounty hunter from Black Swan is actually Strive from Starlight Brigade (I wish I remembered their username). I thought this was really cool and I wanted to have a further discussion about it. What if it is Strive in the future who has grown old and cynical from years of being treated as a hero and people taking him for granted, so he becomes a bounty hunter? Especially with the lyrics "faint with the echoes of my past accolades" and "my past and future lives collide." The fact that both have lyrics sung by Dan and that they both have the energy of a ballad could be nods to this. I just thought it was a cool idea, what do you all think?
Hello everyone,
Just wanted to digress about the so called "dumb" money reddit investing style, taking the case of the meme stock effect as an opportunity to explain my thesis.
It has been quite intense weeks now with the topic, and hundred of lines have been alredy writen, lot of them critizising the dumb people (reddit) who have been behind it. However, from my point of view , the most insightful take of this has been that it is clear that REDDIT IS A BLACK SWAN EVENT GENERATOR.
DISCLAIMER: First, I am not a english native speaker, so forgive me beforehand for my poor writing style. It somehow embarrases me to write so bad. Second, if I see the post topic interest people I will go adding content during the process.
What is a black swan event? Popularized by Nassim Taleb are such events that are impossible to predict beforehand and have an extreme impact. Clear examples in the stock have been the meme stocks, since nobody realisticaly could though few months ago what was going to happen ( no, DFV was not able to predict the event), and the rise of the stock has been quite extreme too, with 7000% increse in just 6 month, with the plus of exposing the dirty tactics of the HF worldwide. Moving from the stock world, we can categorize as black swans event like the COVID-19, Trump winning few years ago, the 11S attacks etc.
But, why do I say that reddit is a black swan generator? Okey , there are different frameworks to understand where a black swan event can be generated, and reddit , as I will explain , is the perfect framework to grow them.
In its core, black swan can be seen as the output of processes where big no-linearities have effect, and the winner takes all effect.. By reddits layout, best post, comments or memes achieve most of the visualization. Let me explain better.
Imagine that we are able to put a single variable score to each post posted in , for example, r/StockMarket , given the likehood of being liked and upvoted by an redditor. Imagine then we have 1 million different post,of average quality ranging between 0 to 1, and just 10 outlier post with 1.2 quality score. Guess what will happen when redditors start to read its feedpage, and to scoring post? That all the redditor will read the 1.2 posts (because are going to be upvoted by everyone), an
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I’ve been kinda dragging my feet about posting this, but since the anime’s coming out next weekish and it’s for sure going to feature more of Black Swan, I figured now would be a good time as any to post this. We’re 24 chapters into the plot and despite Black Swan being the focus for chapters 23 and 24, we have learned nothing new about the 12 executives or other notable agents or their leaders. (I suspect it will be like this for a while.)
Anyways, I made a relationship chart of sorts about the agents of Black Swan that I pieced together from the main story (all the way up to chapter 24) and from certain Rumors & Secrets. If PG has released side materials that go into detail about Black Swan, I wouldn’t know about it;;;
(It’s not the best chart, I know.)
A more thorough explantation of my chart:
As far as I can tell, there are at least 2 distinctive individuals (or more?) acting as the leaders of Black Swan. Or, at they very least they’re a higher authority that the BS 12 have to obey:
- Old Man with rings. (I shall name him “Mood Rings” because of Lucien’s Rumors & Secrets: An Elusive Man.): Mood Rings seems to be the one who sponsored Hades’ Reset Plan in chapter 16, and is also the one responsible for Kiro’s identity as Kiro (Kiro’s Rumors & Secrets: Between Light and Darkness)
- Masked Man with rings: He’s the one who chewed Lucien out at the end of chapter 13. He also panicked over Kiro’s return in chapter 16? Whether he is the man who is backing the BS 10’s plans at the end of chapter 16 or if it was someone else (not Mood Rings) is not clarified yet. Which is why...
- ???: To be honest, I’m not 100% sure if there’s a 3rd ringleader in charge. But if I had to guess, I think there is a possibility of a 3rd person lording over the BS12 — Having 2 leaders in charge of a global crime syndicate might make it too easy for a power struggle to break out, but having 3 in charge would be ideal in keeping each other in check and prevent power struggles from ripping apart the organization. Maybe.
The EXO of Black Swan The 12 Deities of Black Swan. Despite popular belief, the 12 are not the leaders of Black Swan. (Chapter 23 confirms this.) I mostly get the impression that they’re the most accomplished agents of Black Swan, and whenever one fails so hard that they go MIA/AWOL/etc, it’d be easy to replace the missing member with another agent from within Black Swan. Nice to know that even a global crime syn
I was just watching the black swan episode with my wife, we have watched it tons of times since we love it so much, and I mentioned to my wife that I think Larry's theory that the black swan was the cause of Norm's death is actually what happened to Norm. I know part of the humor is that we are never told the cause, but I always thought that Norm's argument with Larry on the golf course was so minor and very unlikely to cause a heart attack. Have any of you thought the same?
Hi all, I recently read Black Swan by Nassim Nicolas Taleb and I was blown away by the theory that he put about high likeliness of highly improbable event and the scale of impact. But I want to explore more the this subject. I want to follow his advice on how we should look for theories that challenge a conjectures made. Please suggest me any book out there which points the shortcomings of this theory. TIA
Notes:
- Time Period Analyzed: 11/27/2020 to 2/19/2021
- Options data was pulled from contracts that had expiration dates from January 8th until February 19th, 2021.
Disclaimers and Constraints:
- This information does not constitute financial advice.
- The information used in these analyses was extracted from chartexchange.com and is available to the public.
- The total amount of calls and puts for the period analyzed is understated: there is volume for calls and puts that were purchased and held (open interest) for contract expiration dates later than February 19th 2021. This statement is especially true for out of the money puts that were purchased on January 26th, 27th, and 28th of 2021 for contracts that expired after February 19th 2021. This part of the analysis will be conducted in a separate post as it brings to light an important phenomenon that did not happen prior to the black swan event - the abundant purchasing of OOTM puts at < $5 strike prices.
Daily High Stock Price vs Max Option Strike
Notable Dates on This Graph:
- 1/13/2021: The stock price nearly doubles (+89.46%) but market makers only increased the max strike by 25% (from 40 to 50). At this point, the daily high was 77% of the max strike price, which was unprecedented for the time period analyzed up to that point. This date is also important as the daily stock volume increased almost 20x (1946%) along with a massive increase in call volume (+1065.87%) and put volume (+1845.14%) respectively.
- 1/22/2021: The daily high of the stock price ($76.76) passes the maximum strike of 75, thereby making every single call on that date in the money (ITM) for a short period of time. In premarket on 1/25/2021, the price pushed to $136.
- 1/25/2021: The daily high of the stock price ($159.18) once again passes the now doubled maximum strike of 150, once again making every single call on that date ITM for a short period of time and later that day the price is promptly shut down to 50% of the maximum price to a low of $75.51.
- No other dates observed does the daily high stock price pass the maximum strike price, but there were close attempts on 1/26/2021 and 1/27/2021.
- On 1/29/2021, market makers set the options strike price to its maximum of 800 for options out for the remainder of the time period
im interested in hearing your craziest theories about the black swan such as who you thibj sophies biological parents are, who are the few members of the collective we dont know yet, etc...anything like that. im curious what other people think. orrr if you have any other wild theories
TLDR: Past short squeezes have often come after a sudden unpredicted float reduction as showcased in Northern Pacific of 1901 and VW in 2008. BBBY share repurchase announcement exemplifies this quality of squeezes and sent ripples through the "meme basket".
Hi all, to quote Winston Churchhill, "The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see", so we will be using history that has occurred in past "short squeezes" as well as some recent information to mold my thesis.
Also, I found it helpful to realize that any of these trading situations from years before computerized trading with a slight grain of salt. Why? Because "a trade" took a lot longer back then, like minutes instead of microseconds, which is worldly different but general principles apply. It is only exacerbated in the complexity of modern markets by high-frequency trading and in general how fast trading has become.
1901 Northern Pacific Squeeze
A slugfest between two titans, James Hill/J.P. Morgan and Steve Harriman, in one of the last great railroad wars of America. In 1901, Union Pacific was in a shitty position, mired in bankruptcy, and not enough profit to meet its obligations. However, Steve Harriman believed that if Union Pacific could acquire railroad lines in Chicago(Burlington & Quincy Railroad) the railroad would become extremely profitable and powerful. However, James Hill and the Northern Pacific Railroad, with support from J.P. Morgan, thought the Chicago railroads would bring massive profit also. In the ensuing negotiations for Burlington. The owner of Burlington went with the Northern Pacific offer. This royally pissed of Harriman and theoretically, Hill/Morgan only owned 23% of Northern Pacific. So, Harriman became Chad Harriman and began buying Northern Pacific shares on the open market secretly to wrestle control from Hill/Morgan and utilize the Chicago railroads.
Pause, this was a 155 million dollar market in 1901 dollars(5,002,123,529 in today's dollars). Fucking huge market. So pretty much if Jeff Bezos began buying all Gamestop common shares on the open market because he believed the NFT marketplace for games would be huge.
Well, Morgan and friends didn't realize that Harriman did such a big dick wreckless move until Harriman almost owned the entire float. That's when the price started rising as the bidding war began between the two parties. As they bid up the stock, a flurry of short-sellers entered the equation. Now *enter a classic
... keep reading on reddit ➡Isabelle Furhman who gave a great and unsettling performance (especially for a child actor at the time) in Orphan, is finally given a long overdue lead role and man, is it harrowing, frightening, and unforgettable. Her performance and character continues to live rent free in my head and I watched it over a week ago. She's rightfully already won best actress at a couple festivals, and thankfully got an Independent Spirit Award nomination. The film also got nominations for best feature, best director, best supporting actress, and editing and cinematography.
What Whiplash did for jazz band, and Black Swan did for ballet, The Novice does for row crew. It's another character study of a person willing to go beyond their limits both physically and psychologically and then even further, no matter the cost. But with its propulsive and gorgeous direction/editing/cinematography/sound design, it ends up being a heart pounding, unsettling, and disturbing psychological thriller that just happens to be about row crew.
I'm being vague because it's best to just go in blind. But Furhman, just, wow, really adds to the intensity. I can't stop thinking about it and look forward to watching it again. Just make sure you have some booze or anxiety meds, because it's like one extended panic attack that is relentless and doesn't let up even after the credits start to role. It's also a great debut feature and I look forward to whatever Lauren Hadaway does next.
Don't let this one go under your radar. My palms were sweaty for basically the entire time, and I felt just as bruised and ruined by the end.
Give Furhman the damn Oscar nomination! it won't happen. But she deserves all the accolades. I hope she finally breaks out after this, like she should have after Orphan.
First of all I'd like to say that I absolutely loved this film! I watched a couple days after Whiplash because I guess I was into super tense films about obsessed artists this week, and I thoroughly enjoyed both - though Black Swan was definitely much more uncomfortable to watch (that hangnail scene UGH). I get why people say they're somewhat similar, though Black Swan focusses a lot on Nina's sexual maturation and slightly less so on the pursuit of perfection, and Whiplash is more about wanting to achieve notoriety. I think both have their strengths and for both films their endings are definitely one of them.
On to my theory: I think that Nina didn't actually stab herself and bleed to death but instead it's just a metaphor which represents that she has killed the white swan - the innocence and fragility - in herself, and in doing that has completely lost herself.
If she really impaled herself she would have bled out much sooner with the vigorous actions of the black swan dance, and the fact that it only started bleeding out when she realises she hallucinated killing Lily (just BEFORE she pulls out the glass) is a clue to me that its not real.
Also, in the final scene, and when everyone congratulates her at the end they take FAR too long to notice such a massive wound, and Thomas and Lily's reaction could definitely be a hallucination on her part, cause since she has psychosis I don't think that we can really take anything she sees at face value, especially after she made that final transformation, and Lily has been part of countless hallucinations before this (in the train, walking past her in the alleyway, walking into the studio at night, the sex dream, killing her etc.)
I admit I could be completely wrong and she really did end up dying in the end but even Portman herself says that she doesn't believe that was the case (though like me that could just be her interpretation).
Everyone has been in awe of Euron's ship. Is this ship the infamous Silence though?
I'm not quite sure.
A few redditors have already pointed out in other threads of how this ship looks like a trireme. Browsing the wikipedia article on triremes, I noticed this image in the construction section. If you look closely at the hull of Euron's ship, you will notice the same nail-less building construction (the white dots are the dowels).
Ships built like this were described in: >To give her archers a solid platform from which to draw and loose, Xanda Qo built ships larger than any previously seen in the Summer Sea—tall graceful ships cunningly fit together without so much as a single nail, many walled with rare hardwoods of the isles made harder still with magics, so the rams of slaver ships cracked and splintered against their sides. As swift as they were strong, her ships oft sported tall, curved prows carved into the shapes of birds and beasts. These "swan necks" won them the sobriquet of "swan ships." >>--The World of Ice and Fire - Beyond the Free Cities: The Summer Isles
Now, if you look inside the bow (front) of the Euron's ship, you will see what looks like a castle similar to that of a swan ship (Cinnamon Wind).
>Thrice longships were sighted by the crow's nest. Two were well astern, however, and the Cinnamon Wind soon outdistanced them. The third appeared near sunset, to cut them off from Whispering Sound. When they saw her oars rising and falling, lashing the copper waters white, Kojja Mo sent her archers to the castles with their great bows of goldenheart that could send a shaft farther and truer than even Dornish yew. She waited till the longship came within two hundred yards before she gave the command to loose. Sam loosed with them, and this time he thought his arrow reached the ship. One volley was all it took. The longship veered south in search of tamer prey. >>A Feast for Crows - Samwell V
To keep this post short of quotes, here are some facts about Summer Isle swan ships:
- Large Ships with nail-less construction
- Built by Summer Isles (3/4 of all swan ships built at one shipyard on Koj)
- All have large white sails.
- Very fast with winds
Background
A few years ago, I bought a book by the Lebanese statistician / ex-options trader Nassim Taleb, called "The Black Swan". Some of you Apes may have heard of it, because it became a best seller a little after the Lehman Shock. The book was published in 2007, but seemed to predict (or at least anticipate the possibility of) the events that happened the following year and beyond. Given everything that has occurred over the last 1.5 years, I started to read the book again the other day, after years of it gathering dust in my book cabinet.
The Existence of Black Swans
The origin of the term "Black Swan" is in fact about two thousand years old, from Ancient Rome. It refers to the improbability of there being black feathered swans in the world, and likens this to the possibility that any system of thought - especially those currently taken for granted - could be suddenly undone by an unforeseen event that disproves it.
One way to think of it is that no-one really believes in the Loch Ness Monster any more. But what if a freshly deceased body of such a creature gets washed up on the shores of the Loch tomorrow? We would all have no choice but to fundamentally change our conceived beliefs about many things, particularly the natural sciences of course, in that case.
And so it was for aeons about black swans, with the conceived notion in Europe that there could be none of these particular creatures existing in this world. But to their immense surprise, this improbability suddenly became defunct in an instant, when they were actually "discovered" in Western Australia in the late 17th century. No doubt the local Aboriginal Australians were just as surprised, seeing how surprised these Dutch explorers looked when encountering the common birds...
Black Swan Theory
So the theory is that sometimes events happen, that are almost unbelievably shocking in both their impact and for the fact that they could not be predicted beforehand. Nothing like it has happened in (at least) living memory and no-one alive could even consider it could actually occur. The more detailed definition that Taleb gives in the book is as follows:
"What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes.
*First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme 'impact'. Third, in spite of its o
... keep reading on reddit ➡
