今年奥斯卡大热的影片《黑天鹅》不但让女主角揽得小金人，也让观众看到了艺术家创作角色过程的艰辛。不过，我们今天要说的这个“黑天鹅事件”跟这部电影可没什么关系。

Black swan is the event that is a surprise (to the observer) and has a major impact.

“黑天鹅”事件指突然发生并且产生巨大影响的事件。

The term black swan was a Latin expression—its oldest known reference comes from the poet Juvenal's characterization of something being "a rare bird in the lands, and very like a black swan."

“黑天鹅”是一个拉丁短语，其最早的出处是诗人尤文纳尔（译者注：尤文纳尔为罗马讽刺派诗人）在诗中将某个事物描绘为“世间罕有之鸟，酷似黑天鹅”。

It was used to explain:

这个表达用于解释此类事件的三种性质：

1. The disproportionate role of high-impact, hard to predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance and technology.

在历史、科学、金融以及技术领域中，这种发生在正常预期之外、影响巨大、难以预知而且罕见的事件所扮演的重要角色。

2. The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities) .

（因其低概率的特点）很难用科学手段计算出这种罕见事件发生的可能性。

3. The psychological biases that make people individually and collectively blind to uncertainty and unaware of the massive role of the rare event in historical affairs.

因心理偏见，使得人们忽视了历史事件中罕见事件所产生巨大影响的不确定性和未知性。

The rise of the Internet, the personal computer, World War I, and the September 11 attacks are given as examples of Black Swan Events.

因特网的崛起、个人电脑出现、第一次世界大战以及911恐怖袭击均为“黑天鹅事件”的范例。

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