Shadowing Practice: The Black Swan Theory - The Random Moments That Change Everything - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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This video is sponsored by the Personal Information Removal Service and Cogni.
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Protect yourself from data brokers and search sites.
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Use my link in the description to get 60% off in Cogni's annual plan.
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There are no real black swans,
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only white ones, aside from the soft grays and youth.
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We have never seen a blue,
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green, or rainbow-colored swan, and we have never seen a black one,
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because they don't exist.
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That is why, when we say something is a black swan,
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we mean to say it is not real.
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It is impossible.
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This was the belief held across all of Europe prior to the 18th century,
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just a little over 300 years ago.
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Originating from the words of the second-century Roman poet Juvenal,
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the phrase black swan was used exclusively to refer to something impossible,
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similar to the idiom when pigs fly.
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The reason for this was simple.
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No one in Europe had ever seen anything other than a white swan.
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All observations in historical records reported a consistent, clear reality.
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white swans existed.
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The problem, of course, is that black swans do very much exist.
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They're not even rare in their native habitat.
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They've existed abundantly for a very long time.
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They were just unknown.
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Only after the year 1697,
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when Dutch explorers found black swans all over Australia,
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did this reality, or rather the comprehension of reality, change.
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Centuries' worth of consistent observations and subsequent expectations in phraseology revealed to be insufficient and false.
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As if a pig suddenly flew,
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what had previously been a symbol of impossibility suddenly became a symbol of humanity's inability to ever know what is
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and isn't possible.
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Black swans became a metaphor for unexpected events that undermine entire assumptions about truth.
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More recently, the term black swan or black swan event has been popularized by the author,
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statistician, and former options trader, Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
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Across several of his books,
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including Antifragile, Fooled by Randomness,
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and The Black Swan, Taleb often explores the nature,
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impact, and pervasiveness of unforeseen,
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unpredictable, and history-altering events, many of which he refers to as black swans.
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Taleb defines a black swan event as comprising the following three essential qualities.
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1. The event comes as a surprise.
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All prevailing models of understanding and prediction struggle to foresee or,
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in some cases, even imagine it.
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2. The event has immense impact,
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reshaping major aspects of the world or how we see it. And 3.
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The event appears completely explainable after the fact.
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Contorted by retrospective rationalization, narratives are formed around the event that make seem clear or normal in hindsight.
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Crucially, Taleb believes that most important historical events are black swans.
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Scientific discoveries, artistic achievements, technological breakthroughs,
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wars, global disasters, and major shifts in markets and ideologies are often black swans, according to Taleb.
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He writes, History and societies do not crawl.
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They make jumps.
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They go from fracture to fracture with a few vibrations in between.
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Yet we like to believe in the predictable, small incremental progression.
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For Taleb, black swans reside on every landmass of society,
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swim in every stream of consciousness,
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and wade in every marsh of reality.
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We see their presence in recent history in notable moments like the rise of the internet,
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the 2008 financial crisis, the September 11th attacks,
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the fall of the Soviet Union,
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the formation of Einstein's theory of relativity,
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and the discovery of penicillin.
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Perhaps more unsettling than how immense the consequences of singular events
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can be is what these black swans reveal about our comprehension of reality,
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our expectations of the future,
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and the limits of our ability to ever truly grasp either.
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These outlier events can completely undo entire systems of logic,
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knowledge, prediction, expectation, and operation.
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They can uproot what we believed for centuries to be obvious,
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break down what were once considered natural laws of the universe,
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overhaul previously robust institutions, and generate,
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seemingly out of nothing, entirely new realms of being.
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And yet, prior to these world-changing moments,
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even when they're just one step in front of us,
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we never quite see them coming,
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or at least we never act as though we do.
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As a species, we struggle greatly with comprehending probability, odds, risk, and uncertainty.
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As the historian and writer Yuval Noah Harari points out,
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our ancestors were never obliged to handle large amounts of mathematical data.
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No forager needed to remember,
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say, the number of fruit on each tree in the forest,
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so human Human brains did not adapt to storing and processing numbers.
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Consequently, we are left, still today,
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struggling to make sense of things at large scales.
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Across long time horizons, large numbers or both,
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order begins to blur into the appearance of randomness and chaos.
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To sustain function, the human mind seems to bend around the variability,
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uncertainty and chaos of the world,
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filling in the gaps and solidifying itself like wet concrete,
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turning otherwise unstable space into something solid and walkable.
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we are left with is the illusion of stable ground and a reality that is set to break with a single step.
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Perhaps our greatest offense in the realm of faulty intuition is that we tend to expect linear progressions.
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In other words, we tend to believe that what has happened will continue to happen and in the same relative manner,
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and that what has never happened will never happen.
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This is the result of biases like the narrative fallacy and the availability heuristic,
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where we tend to significantly simplify the recent past,
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and then extrapolate this simplified version into the future.
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Of course, when these biases are addressed explicitly,
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we know it isn't the case that things always remain consistent or progress linearly.
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On some level, we know that history is full of things that had never happened,
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until they did, and we know that things once considered permanent have since ceased entirely.
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But therein lies the rub.
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Despite the apparent regularity of novel disruptions and turning points,
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and despite our general awareness of them,
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we still seem incapable of properly expecting or preparing for them,
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whether it's on an individual or societal level,
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whether it's mentally or systematically.
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Although they do sound ominous and tend to relate to negative consequences,
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of course, not all black swans are bad.
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Just as often as they bring disruption or destruction,
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they bring creation, advancement, and revelation.
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The cosmos, the stars, earth,
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life, these are all black swan events.
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And of course, we ourselves are a black swan event.
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An unlikely, unprecedented, self-aware, symbolic,
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tool-making, existence-questioning species that nothing could have ever predicted before us,
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that changed everything, and whose existence is now completely normal and obvious.
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Only because of the apparent chaos and randomness of the cosmos do we exist.
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And as beings forged by the very fire of chaos,
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we can also learn to better handle and withstand the flames.
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Another concept spearheaded by Taleb is known as antifragility.
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This idea refers to things and systems that benefit and grow stronger through exposure to disorder and randomness.
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This includes things like evolution,
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the immune system, decentralized free markets,
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airlines, the internet, and knowledge itself.
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As these things are exposed to stressors or errors,
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they adapt and strengthen, growing more capable of thriving under uncertainty in the future.
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And of course, this also includes us.
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If we are willing to take and face risks,
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undergo potential harm, and move forward through an uncertain existence with mental fortitude and resilience,
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doing our best to prepare for what we think will occur while accepting the events that actually do,
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growing from them as they shape the course of history with and through us,
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then we too can be antifragile.
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Ultimately, we don't know what black swans might be lurking around us right now,
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grazing in the shadows of unknowability,
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floating in the mires of uncertainty.
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We are always at the edge,
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where light meets shadow, where stable land meets boggy ground,
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projecting out in all directions our comfortable narratives of linearity and predictability.
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But from the surface of our expectations all the way down into our most core beliefs,
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so much of what we expect and hold to be true could reveal at any point,
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suddenly and all all at once,
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to be deeply flawed, incomplete, or flat out wrong.
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The laws of nature, our position in the cosmos,
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the very condition of the cosmos itself,
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the realities of consciousness and selfhood,
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our idea of what's right and wrong,
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what's important and what our purpose is,
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our expectations of the future.
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We don't know what is true,
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and we don't know what will happen.
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But we don't need to.
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At bottom, we don't even want to.
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The apparent randomness and unpredictability,
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as much as our minds work to smooth it over and fill in the cracks,
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provide the slants, slopes, and gaps that thrill us, that build us.
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If we wish to improve our experience in a chaotic universe,
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perhaps instead of always trying to predict or control events,
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worrying about what might happen or has happened,
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we should learn to enjoy the birdwatching from the rollercoaster ride that is existence.
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Something that very few people could have predicted just a couple decades ago is the economy built on personal information.
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Who you are, what you like,
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where you live, and so on,
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are now all sought, packaged, and sold online.
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What used to be the norm,
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general privacy, has been upended.
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A black swan made of data.
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This video's sponsor, Incogni, is protection against the uncertainty and invasiveness of the modern world.
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Data brokers are constantly obtaining your personal information,
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like your name, social security number,
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by extracting it when you buy something or fill something out online.
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They then sell the information to businesses,
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marketers, and people's search sites.
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Incogni works to stop this by automatically contacting these sites on your behalf and getting your personal information removed.
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Legally, these sites must remove your information if you request it.
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But doing this on your own is essentially impossible, time-consuming, and confusing.
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That's why the data broker business model worked.
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With Incogni, however, it's as simple as signing up and granting permission,
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and then they take care of the rest.
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And with the Incogni Unlimited plan,
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you can even submit an unlimited number of custom requests.
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By simply pasting the links to wherever your data is exposed,
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The benefits aren't just peace of mind,
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And of course, as always,
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thank you so much for watching in general,
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and see you next video.
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Why Practice Speaking with This Video?
This video provides an engaging platform for IELTS speaking practice through the intriguing concept of the Black Swan Theory. By watching and mimicking the speaker, learners can harness the shadowing technique, which involves listening to a passage and simultaneously repeating it. This method not only enhances fluency but also builds confidence in speaking complex ideas clearly. As you delve into the nuances of unexpected events, the vocabulary and expressions used will help you articulate thoughts more effectively, an essential skill for both IELTS exams and everyday communication.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
Throughout the video, several grammatical structures and expressions stand out, making them perfect for learners to incorporate into their own speaking. Here are a few key points:
- Conditional Clauses: The phrase "If a pig suddenly flew" illustrates a conditional scenario, emphasizing impossibility and speculation. Practicing conditional sentences can help you express hypothetical situations with clarity.
- Past Simple vs. Present Perfect: The speaker often refers to historical events, such as “No one in Europe had ever seen” which uses a past perfect form to discuss something that occurred before another past event. Understanding and practicing these tenses can significantly boost your speaking accuracy.
- Defining Qualities: The format “The event has immense impact, reshaping major aspects...” demonstrates how to define characteristics effectively. This structure is useful when explaining concepts or ideas during your IELTS speaking tests.
Common Pronunciation Traps
Several words and phrases in the transcript may present challenges for pronunciation:
- “Black Swan”: Ensure to articulate both words clearly, stressing the first syllable of “black” and pronouncing “swan” without losing the ‘w’ sound.
- “Unforeseen”: This word can be tricky; focus on the middle syllable, “fore,” while keeping a smooth flow to avoid stressing the wrong part.
- “Impossibility”: This word is often mispronounced—practice breaking it down into smaller parts: im-pos-si-bil-i-ty to enhance clarity.
Engaging with these pronunciation traps, while practicing the shadow speak technique, will significantly improve English pronunciation and prepare you for articulate discussions. Embrace these challenges, and you’ll find that your speaking skills will soar!
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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