Democrats should bear the blame for their stupendous errors and the Republicans for not stopping them. It’s not fair to say everything sucks, but America is certainly approaching terminal suck.
Check out the “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. About reacting to unexpected events. Good read.
““The sighting of the first black swan might have been an interesting surprise for a few ornithologists (and others extremely concerned with the coloring of birds), but that is not where the significance of the story lies. It illustrates a severe limitation to our learning from observations or experience and the fragility of our knowledge. One single observation can invalidate a general statement derived from millennia of confirmatory sightings of millions of white swans. All you need is one single (and, I am told, quite ugly) black bird.fn1
I push one step beyond this philosophical-logical question into an empirical reality, and one that has obsessed me since childhood.fn2 What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes.
First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact (unlike the bird). Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.”
It’s like forty Swatted up police taking down a 55 year old pastor. ‘His services are possibly killing people. He’s a murderer. Swat up everyone. We got a bad guy to take down’. Way way way easier than doing something actually important. Like going after fentanyl sellers.
But, partly because these are generally easy things to do. Don’t forget that. There is no real crisis. It probably won’t happen again, whatever it was. It is therefore unmeasurable. You look strong. Nothing happens. Woohoo! A great thing to work on.
Check out the “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. About reacting to unexpected events. Good read.
““The sighting of the first black swan might have been an interesting surprise for a few ornithologists (and others extremely concerned with the coloring of birds), but that is not where the significance of the story lies. It illustrates a severe limitation to our learning from observations or experience and the fragility of our knowledge. One single observation can invalidate a general statement derived from millennia of confirmatory sightings of millions of white swans. All you need is one single (and, I am told, quite ugly) black bird.fn1
I push one step beyond this philosophical-logical question into an empirical reality, and one that has obsessed me since childhood.fn2 What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes.
First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact (unlike the bird). Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.”
Excerpt From
The Black Swan
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
It’s like forty Swatted up police taking down a 55 year old pastor. ‘His services are possibly killing people. He’s a murderer. Swat up everyone. We got a bad guy to take down’. Way way way easier than doing something actually important. Like going after fentanyl sellers.
But, partly because these are generally easy things to do. Don’t forget that. There is no real crisis. It probably won’t happen again, whatever it was. It is therefore unmeasurable. You look strong. Nothing happens. Woohoo! A great thing to work on.
Every time something out of the ordinary happens I think ‘DON’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT THIS!’ They always do.
A plethora of unforced errors, a Grand Slam of destruction.