Posts from the Past

Recently I completed an intriguing book by Nassim Taleb titled The Black Swans: Impact of the Highly Improbable. Taleb describes black swans as rare and unexpected events that are extremely consequential yet are explainable by experts after they have occurred. He points out that the experts rarely predict the event in time to take action before the event has occurred. The term black swans comes from the original European idea that black swans did not exist because they had only experienced white swans--that is, until explorers found Australia. The American Statistician journal is featuring Taleb's book in their August edition (I am a member of the American Statistical Association). I look forward to their analysis.

A point that Talib makes in his book is that we lack the ability to make predictions based on the data at hand, especially in regards to history and how it unfolds. To make his point he describes how William Shirer, the definitive author who wrote The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, also published his diary covering the period from 1934 to 1941 when Shirer was a journalist in Europe. Taleb points out that the diary in no way clearly predicts that a massive event like WWII was unfolding.

With that in mind, I thought I would publish on this blog some of the observations and predictions that I was making as the War in Iraq was unfolding. In effect, I have chosen to expose my failed attempts to predict the future about the war on this blog. Throughout the course of the War in Iraq I wrote several letters and essays but kept the writings to myself. I did clearly express my views as any reader that has spent time with me will see as they read the material. There are five or six works and I will post them over time with their creation date.