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Comment by pdenya | Hacker News Reader

I also misunderstood this

    It's more like when a small group of people split a large powerball jackpot

    [A Black Swan is] more like when a small group of people split a large powerball jackpot

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Why is it even unusual for multiple people to split a large powerball? By definition: a large powerball means there's more tickets and thus more possible matches for the random draw.

Another minor point: there's gotta be dozens of people playing the Lost numbers, the Miami heat starting lineup, etc... every time, so there are natural clusters of group splitting jackpots for lotto winners .

I just said group because presumably he wasn't the only investor in those companies, so a group of people stand to profit. If he was the only investor I would have said individual. It's also meant to highlight the fact that multiple people are in on this, whereas an actual black swan event is something that tends to be much more difficult to predict or be a part of.

I would be amazed if someone could go 5/40 in predicting black swan events under their original definition.

I think the "group" here splitting the Powerball implied a group of people collectively owning/splitting a single winning ticket (such as an office, team, or family pooling money to buy a block of tickets) rather than more than one winning ticket splitting the jackpot.

Much like a group of investors investing in early stage companies.

Ahh, I see the confusion now, sorry. Thanks, edited for clarity.

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