I’ve argued that the 9\/11 Commission is fundamentally flawed in that it’s trying to review history as though it were lived with the perfect knowledge we have of the past – which we obviously cannot have of the future.<\/p>\n
Tim Oren points us<\/a> to an excellent op-end in the N.Y. Times<\/a> on just this subject. It’s by risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and here are three great quotes:<\/p>\n Much of the research into humans’ risk-avoidance machinery shows that it is antiquated and unfit for the modern world; it is made to counter repeatable attacks and learn from specifics. If someone narrowly escapes being eaten by a tiger in a certain cave, then he learns to avoid that cave. Yet vicious black swans by definition do not repeat themselves. We cannot learn from them easily.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n …<\/b><\/p>\n …infinite vigilance is not possible. Negligence in any specific case needs to be compared with the normal rate of negligence for all possible events at the time of the tragedy \u2014 including those events that did not take place but could have. Before 9\/11, the risk of terrorism was not as obvious as it seems today to a reasonable person in government (which is part of the reason 9\/11 occurred). Therefore the government might have used its resources to protect against other risks \u2014 with invisible but perhaps effective results.<\/p>\n …<\/b><\/p>\n The greatest flaw in the commission’s mandate, regrettably, mirrors one of the greatest flaws in modern society: it does not understand risk. The focus of the investigation should not be on how to avoid any specific black swan, for we don’t know where the next one is coming from. The focus should be on what general lessons can be learned from them. And the most important lesson may be that we should reward people, not ridicule them, for thinking the impossible. After a black swan like 9\/11, we must look ahead, not in the rear-view mirror.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I think we desperately need to learn to identify and respond to black swans, and that we need to build systems in our society and government that will let us do so. The swans are getting bigger and more deadly. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve argued that the 9\/11 Commission is fundamentally flawed in that it’s trying to review history as though it were lived with the perfect knowledge we have of the past – which we obviously cannot have of the future. Tim Oren points us to an excellent op-end in the N.Y. Times on just this subject. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}