The Memetic Swan

I'm reading the Black Swan by Nicholas Taleb. I haven't even finished it but feel compelled to comment on it right now.

The Black Swan event, according to Taleb, is a very improbable event with enormous implications, a far outlier in the Gaussian sense. One of my first posts in this blog was about links and nodes of networks and based on that my conjecture is that black Swan events can arise in nonlinear environments but not in linear. Linear events, where the output is proportinal to the input, pile up a Gaussian curve statistic but in a network the same trigger can either fade away or blow out of proportion through the many nonlinear feedback loops.

I conjecture that all memes are potential Black Swans. The memetic network is like a excited laser, feed in the wrong frequency and nothing will happen but with the right input the whole energy is released in one go.