Reading The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb drives home a brutal truth: it’s not just rare, world-shaking events that throw us off — it’s how our brains work. We’re wired to see the world as linear. We expect change to be steady, incremental, predictable. And when it isn’t, we freeze.
Neil deGrasse Tyson nailed this on a recent podcast with Hasan Minhaj:
“We live in an exponential world… but it feels linear because we’re only occupying tiny bits of a much larger scale of change.”
Neil deGrasse Tyson on ‘Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know‘ with host Hasan Minhaj, 2025
The result? We don’t just miss the moment — we fail to adapt when it’s already here.
Take healthcare. Our medical systems pour trillions into treating heart disease, diabetes, and cancer after they’ve exploded, but far less into prevention. Why? We assume these problems will grow linearly. But it’s also status quo bias, inertia, optimism bias, the bystander effect, attention issues, a flawed incentives system, and a host of other barriers that suggest that unless a solution has a direct, immediate economic payoff, it’s not “worth it.” Which, ironically, ends up costing far more than had we done the preventative thing in the first place. I digress.
We see this phenomena in economics as well. In 2008, a small shift in interest rates and mortgage defaults triggered a global financial collapse that few saw coming, even as the signals compounded. We don’t just misjudge how fast things can unravel; we overestimate our ability to correct course once the cascade begins.
History is full of other examples. Tyson points to New York City between 1905 and 1915: in one photo of Fifth Avenue, there are 50 horse-drawn carriages for every car; a decade later, it’s the reverse. Whole industries — blacksmiths, buggy makers, wheelwrights — disappeared in ten years. Most people didn’t pivot until it was too late.
Taleb would call these “Black Swans,” but the deeper danger isn’t just surprise — it’s paralysis. Our refusal to adapt fast enough, to accept that the future often arrives as a step function, not a slope, is what does the most damage.
And with the rapid rise of Artificial Intelligence and LLMs, we’re now facing another one. Tyson warns that AI and AGI will reshape economies with similar speed. The threat isn’t just job loss — it’s failing to see where new industries and opportunities will rise, like gas stations and auto factories after the horse. If we don’t start planning for that shift now, we’ll repeat the same mistake: blindsided, scrambling, reacting instead of creating.
The takeaway? Stop assuming tomorrow will look like today, only slightly faster or sleeker. The next curveball isn’t gradual. It’s sudden. And surviving it means learning to move while it’s still uncomfortable.