I Still Can’t Find My Tin-Foil Hat

Before watching Bill Whittle’s excellent video below, please consider the following:

The normalcy bias, or normality bias, refers to a mental state people enter when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects. This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations. The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred then it never will occur. It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation.  Wikipedia

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. Arthur Conan Doyle, Sr.

The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that is a surprise (to the observer), has a major impact, and after the fact is often inappropriately rationalized with the benefit of hindsight.

The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain:

• The disproportionate role of high-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance and technology
• The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities)
• The psychological biases that make people individually and collectively blind to uncertainty and unaware of the massive role of the rare event in historical affairs  Wikipedia

PJTV – Bill Whittle.

The Obama presidency is a disaster we should not repeat, lest it become a “black swan.”

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