The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable · chapter 1 · id the-black-swan-c1-07-the-turkey-problem----a-turkey

“The turkey problem -- a turkey fed for 1,000 days develops increasing confidence in being fed, until the day before Thanksgiving -- is Taleb's version of Bertrand Russell's 1912 chicken analogy from 'The Problems of Philosophy.'”

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MacTutor History: Bertrand Russellsource alive

Russell wrote in The Problems of Philosophy (1912): 'the man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.'

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Problem of Inductionsource alive

Hume argued that inductive reasoning cannot be rationally justified: past regularities provide no logical guarantee of future continuation. Russell later illustrated this with his chicken example.

Wikipedia: Black Swan Theorysource alive

Taleb uses the turkey analogy (an Americanization of Russell's chicken) to illustrate the problem of induction, tracing the philosophical lineage to Hume and Russell.

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