Under these conditions, the burden of proof about absence of harm falls on those proposing an action, not those opposing it. The precautionary principle (PP) states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing severe harm to the public domain (affecting general health or the environment globally), the action should not be taken in the absence of scientific near-certainty about its safety. The paper concludes that the black swan concept should be associated with a surprising extreme event relative to the present knowledge. The main aim of this paper is to contribute to a clarification of the issue in order to strengthen the foundations of the meaning and characterisation of risk, and in this way provide a basis for improved risk management. In this paper we carry out an in-depth analysis of what a black swan means in relation to risk, uncertainty and probability: is a black swan just an extreme event with a very low probability or is it a more surprising event in some sense, for example an unknown unknown? We question how the black swans are linked to the risk concep t, to expected values and probabilities, and to the common distinction between aleatory uncertainties and epistemic uncertainties. A key issue has been the ability of risk assessment and probability theory to capture the black swans. In recent years there has been much focus on the so-called black swans in relation to risk management and decision making under uncertainty.
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