Ludic Fallacy
The belief that the outcomes of non-regulated random occurrences can be encapsulated by statistics and modeling.
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Origin
From the Latin ludus, meaning "play" or "game." Nassim Nicholas Taleb introduced the term in his 2007 book The Black Swan to criticize the habit of applying tidy, casino-style probability models to the messy randomness of real life. The concept is central to Taleb's broader argument that rare, high-impact events cannot be predicted by extrapolating from normal distributions.
Updated February 22, 2026