"A black swan is a unpredictable event that defies prediction." ...


WAS 9/11 A BLACK SWAN?
Nassim Taleb, a scientist-philosopher-businessman, makes the case that 9/11 was a black swan. A black swan is a unpredictable event that defies prediction. An outlier. I agree. He expands:

A vicious black swan has an additional elusive property: its very unexpectedness helps create the conditions for it to occur. Had a terrorist attack been a conceivable risk on Sept. 10, 2001, it would likely not have happened.

In their analysis of black swans (which by definition will likely never be repeated), human beings engage in what is called hindsight bias. This is the tendency to believe that the event was predictable based on knowledge gained after the event occured. In effect, people unknowingly substitute current knowledge of outcomes into the gaps of knowledge that were present when building earlier expectations of potential events. In regards to 9/11, Nassim points out the following (with additional analysis from this weblogger given the complexity of the topic):

globalguerrillas.typepad.com/glo...html

www.edge.org/3rd_culture...b_index.html

globalguerrillas.typepad.com/glo...html

www.windsofchange.net/archive...4867.php

www.xent.com/pipermail/f.../029793.html