The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable · chapter 1 · id the-black-swan-c1-03-taleb-claims-the-lebanese-civi
“Taleb claims the Lebanese Civil War of 1975 started without warning, catching his family and all the adults around him off guard despite their political sophistication -- his grandfather, a deputy prime minister, was no better at predicting events than his uneducated driver.”
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Wikipedia: Lebanese Civil Warsource alive
Multiple preceding events including the 1969 Cairo Agreement, the 1973 Lebanese Army-PLO clashes, and the February 1975 Sidon fishermen's strike all preceded the April 1975 outbreak, constituting visible warning signs of escalating sectarian tension.
Collier & Sambanis, 'Understanding Civil War: Evidence and Analysis' (2005), World Banksource alive
The Lebanese civil war had identifiable structural preconditions including confessional power-sharing breakdown, Palestinian armed presence, and regional proxy dynamics that analysts had flagged before April 1975.
Wikipedia: Nassim Nicholas Talebsource alive
Born in Amioun, Lebanon in 1960, Taleb's family saw its political prominence reduced by the Lebanese Civil War beginning in 1975. His maternal grandfather Fouad Nicolas Ghosn was deputy prime minister of Lebanon.
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