Black swans and other unexpected events

I've been reading "The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a very interesting book on how often the "highly improbable" occurs. I hope to write more about what I've read, but I just had my own "Black Swan" that was unexpected in both a good and a bad sense.

I was typing "Has spring sprung in Duluth?" when my computer suddenly quit! I hadn't plugged it in after returning from the cabin and it I had rebooted it a couple of hours ago. Oh, great! There goes all that I had typed!

I plugged the computer in and rebooted. It said it had 27% charge; that shouldn't have caused it to quit. With heart in mouth, I restarted TextEdit, the program I use to write the drafts for this blog. I selected the file for this month's blog expecting to see nothing since yesterday.

Surprise! Somehow the last character I had typed was still there! Is this a White Swan?

Hidden Evidence

After all that chipping in "Has spring sprung in Duluth?" I sat on the steps of our cabin to rest. For some reason I raised my hand and saw its shadow to the northwest. To the northwest! It's four o'clock in the afternoon. The shadow should be to the northeast. The sun must have gone backward or I slept overnight on the steps.

Well, some important evidence was hidden from me. I had a billed cap on and a tree was between me and the sun. The explanation was that the sun was reflected off a window behind me and cast the shadow in the "wrong" place.

Unfortunately, too many of us take little bits of evidence like this to prove outlandish ideas. Democrats, Republicans, Tea Partiers, progressives, atheists, religious people, business people, laborers, just about everybody including you and me.

This is what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls hidden evidence in "The Black Swan. One example is the story about the people who prayed and were saved from a shipwreck. The people who prayed and drowned were ignored as well as those who didn't pray and were saved from the shipwreck.