tinkering

Black Swans being unpredictable, we need to adjust to their existence
(rather than naively try to predict them). There are so many things we can
do if we focus on antiknowledge, or what we do not know. Among many
other benefits, you can set yourself up to collect serendipitous Black Swans
(of the positive kind) by maximizing your exposure to them. Indeed, in some
domains -such as scientific discovery and venture capital investments-
there is a disproportionate payoff from the unknown, since you typically
have little to lose and plenty to gain from a rare event. We will see that,
contrary to social-science wisdom, almost no discovery, no technologies of
note, came from design and planning they were just Black Swans. The
strategy for the discoverers and entrepreneurs is to rely less on top-down
planning and focus on maximum tinkering and recognizing opportunities
when they present
themselves. So I disagree with the followers of Marx
and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they
allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giv-
ing rewards or “incentives” for skill. The strategy is, then, to tinker as
much as possible and try to collect as many Black Swan opportunities
as you can,

the black swan – taleb