Nassim Taleb names potential threats to humanity

PanARMENIAN.Net - Essayist and mathematical statistician Nassim Taleb has named three potential threats that humanity may face in the coming years.

Taleb told a press conference in Yerevan, Armenia on Thursday, November 30, compared the ability to withstand risks to the flight of an airplane and its readiness to survive a storm.

The expert noted that he himself worked as a trader for many years, and he primarily focuses on risk assessments, trying to understand whether businesses know how they are going to survive the storm.

Among the possible threats, Taleb mentioned pandemic.

“Even before Covid, I talked about the pandemic in my book “The Black Swan”. People don’t always know how events may develop. And we saw that this is a big source of risk, since different pandemics can break out,” Taleb said, according to Sputnik Armenia.

The collapse of the financial system could be another risk. He recalled the 2008 crisis, which had a much more negative impact on people’s lives than deadly diseases. Tools are needed to mitigate and counteract, he said. The biggest risk in the US right now is a collapse of the real estate market.

The third, he said, is the alarming growth Western countries' debt.

“If you are told that the risks are associated with China, the war in Ukraine, in the Gaza Strip, then it is not entirely true,” he said.