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Failure Of Imagination
"Failure of imagination" is a phrase indicating a circumstance wherein something undesirable yet seemingly predictable (particularly from hindsight) was not planned for. The idea was invoked by the 9/11 Commission and other U.S. government officials as a reason that intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and the NSA, failed to prevent the September 11 attacks. Origins The earliest known use of the phrase was by Graham Greene in his 1940 novel, ''The Power and the Glory'': "Hatred is just a failure of imagination". September 11 attacks "Failure of imagination" has been invoked as a reason that intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and the NSA, failed to prevent the September 11 attacks. During the summer of 2003, after the now-declassified report about the September 11 attack, United States Senator Bob Graham said the September 11 attack might have easily been predicted and even prevented. Following these criticisms, President Bus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
9/11 Commission
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was set up on November 27, 2002, "to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11 attacks", including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks. The commission was also mandated to provide recommendations designed to guard against future attacks. Chaired by former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, the commission consisted of five Democrats and five Republicans. The commission was created by Congressional legislation, with the bill signed into law by President George W. Bush. The commission's final report was lengthy and based on extensive interviews and testimony. Its primary conclusion was that the failures of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) permitted the terrorist attacks to occur and that if these agencies had acted more wisely and more aggressively, the attacks ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frank Borman
Frank Frederick Borman II (born March 14, 1928) is a retired United States Air Force (USAF) colonel, aeronautical engineer, test pilot, businessman, and NASA astronaut. He was the commander of Apollo 8, the first mission to fly around the Moon, and together with crewmates Jim Lovell and William Anders, became the first of 24 humans to do so, for which he was awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. , he is the oldest living former American astronaut, eleven days older than Lovell. Four days before he graduated with the West Point Class of 1950, in which he was ranked eighth out of 670, Borman was commissioned in the USAF. He qualified as a fighter pilot and served in the Philippines. He earned a Master of Science degree at Caltech in 1957, and then became an assistant professor of thermodynamics and fluid mechanics at West Point. In 1960, he was selected for Class 60-C at the USAF Experimental Flight Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California and qual ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Decision Theory
Decision theory (or the theory of choice; not to be confused with choice theory) is a branch of applied probability theory concerned with the theory of making decisions based on assigning probabilities to various factors and assigning numerical consequences to the outcome. There are three branches of decision theory: # Normative decision theory: Concerned with the identification of optimal decisions, where optimality is often determined by considering an ideal decision-maker who is able to calculate with perfect accuracy and is in some sense fully rational. # Prescriptive decision theory: Concerned with describing observed behaviors through the use of conceptual models, under the assumption that those making the decisions are behaving under some consistent rules. # Descriptive decision theory: Analyzes how individuals actually make the decisions that they do. Decision theory is closely related to the field of game theory and is an interdisciplinary topic, studied by econom ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black Swan Theory
The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. The term is based on an ancient saying that presumed black swans did not exist a saying that became reinterpreted to teach a different lesson after they were discovered in Australia. The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, starting in 2001, to explain: # The disproportionate role of high-profile, 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 consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities). # The psychological biases that blind people, both individually and collectively, to uncertainty and a rare event's massive role in historical affairs. Taleb's "black swan theory" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unknown Unknown
"There are unknown unknowns" is a phrase from a response United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave to a question at a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) news briefing on February 12, 2002, about the lack of evidence linking the government of Iraq with the supply of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups. Rumsfeld stated: The statement became the subject of much commentary. In ''The Decision Book'', author Mikael Krogerus refers to it as the "Rumsfeld matrix". The statement also features in a 2013 documentary film, ''The Unknown Known'', directed by Errol Morris. Known unknowns refers to "risks you are aware of, such as canceled flights," whereas unknown unknowns are risks that come from situations that are so unexpected that they would not be considered. Origins Rumsfeld's statement brought attention to the concepts of known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns, but national security and intelligence professionals have long used an analysis techn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epistemology
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Epistemologists study the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge, epistemic justification, the rationality of belief, and various related issues. Debates in epistemology are generally clustered around four core areas: # The philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and the conditions required for a belief to constitute knowledge, such as truth and justification # Potential sources of knowledge and justified belief, such as perception, reason, memory, and testimony # The structure of a body of knowledge or justified belief, including whether all justified beliefs must be derived from justified foundational beliefs or whether justification requires only a coherent set of beliefs # Philosophical skepticism, which questions the possibili ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Argument From Ignorance
Argument from ignorance (from la, argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ''ignorance'' represents "a lack of contrary evidence"), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true. This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes the possibility that there may have been an insufficient investigation to prove that the proposition is either true or false. It also does not allow for the possibility that the answer is unknowable, only knowable in the future, or neither completely true nor completely false. In debates, appealing to ignorance is sometimes an attempt to shift the burden of proof. The term was likely coined by philosopher John Locke in the late 17th century. Examples * "I take the view that this lack (of enemy subversive activity in the west coast) is the most ominous sign in our whole situation. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hindsight Bias
Hindsight bias, also known as the knew-it-all-along phenomenon or creeping determinism, is the common tendency for people to perceive past events as having been more predictable than they actually were. People often believe that after an event has occurred, they would have predicted or perhaps even would have known with a high degree of certainty what the outcome of the event would have been before the event occurred. Hindsight bias may cause distortions of memories of what was known or believed before an event occurred, and is a significant source of overconfidence regarding an individual's ability to predict the outcomes of future events. Examples of hindsight bias can be seen in the writings of historians describing outcomes of battles, physicians recalling clinical trials, and in judicial systems as individuals attribute responsibility on the basis of the supposed predictability of accidents. History The hindsight bias, although it was not yet named, was not a new concept w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Attack On Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, just before 8:00a.m. (local time) on Sunday, December 7, 1941. The United States was a neutral country at the time; the attack led to its formal entry into World War II the next day. The Japanese military leadership referred to the attack as the Hawaii Operation and Operation AI, and as Operation Z during its planning. Japan intended the attack as a preventive action. Its aim was to prevent the United States Pacific Fleet from interfering with its planned military actions in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and those of the United States. Over the course of seven hours there were coordinated Japanese attacks on the US-held Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island and on the British Empire ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Unknown Known
''The Unknown Known'' (also known as ''The Unknown Known: The Life and Times of Donald Rumsfeld'') is a 2013 American documentary film about the political career of former U.S. Secretary of Defense and congressman Donald Rumsfeld, directed by Academy Award winning documentarian and filmmaker Errol Morris. The film is a summary of 33 hours of interviews that Morris conducted with Rumsfeld over eleven separate sessions during visits to Newton, Massachusetts. The film was released on April 4, 2014, by Radius-TWC and is dedicated to the memory of Roger Ebert. Synopsis The major portion of the film is spent addressing excerpts from the countless memos, nicknamed 'Yellow Perils' by his first Pentagon staff and 'Snowflakes' by the second, that Rumsfeld wrote during his time as a congressman and advisor to four different presidents, twice as United States Secretary of Defense. It also focuses on a response Rumsfeld gave to a question at a U.S. Department of Defense news briefing o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Henry Rumsfeld (July 9, 1932 – June 29, 2021) was an American politician, government official and businessman who served as Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under president Gerald Ford, and again from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He was both the youngest and the oldest secretary of defense. Additionally, Rumsfeld was a three-term U.S. Congressman from Illinois (1963–1969), director of the Office of Economic Opportunity (1969–1970), counselor to the president (1969–1973), the U.S. Representative to NATO (1973–1974), and the White House Chief of Staff (1974–1975). Between his terms as secretary of defense, he served as the CEO and chairman of several companies. Born in Illinois, Rumsfeld attended Princeton University, graduating in 1954 with a degree in political science. After serving in the Navy for three years, he mounted a campaign for Congress in Illinois's 13th Congressional District, winning in 1962 at the age of 30. Rumsfeld a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RMS Titanic
RMS ''Titanic'' was a British passenger liner, operated by the White Star Line, which sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912 after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, United States. Of the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, more than 1,500 died, making it the deadliest sinking of a single ship up to that time. It remains the deadliest peacetime sinking of a superliner or cruise ship. The disaster drew public attention, provided foundational material for the disaster film genre, and has inspired many artistic works. RMS ''Titanic'' was the largest ship afloat at the time she entered service and the second of three s operated by the White Star Line. She was built by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast. Thomas Andrews, the chief naval architect of the shipyard, died in the disaster. ''Titanic'' was under the command of Captain Edward Smith, who went down with the ship. The ocean liner carri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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