ABSTRACT
THERE ARE different perceptionsabout how much control onehas over the environment. Some societies believe that everything is under the individual’s control, while others believe that we are victims of fate. One way to rationalize random - ness is to try and predict what will happen next. Yet as Nassim Taleb argues in his book The Black Swan (2007), even major events such as world wars were not predictable ex ante. If you look at the value of bonds prior to World War One, there was nothing to indicate that anyone had an inkling the war was about to happen.
