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Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Morning Thoughts: Causes

C.W. and I were talking …

He was wondering how the so-called pundits manage to get things wrong so often, not only wrong but wrong to the extent of assigning contradictory causes for the same incident. He was quoting from the book The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who said therein,

“It happens all the time: a cause is proposed to make you swallow the news and make matters more concrete. After a candidate’s defeat in an election, you will be supplied with the “cause” for the voters” disgruntlement. Any conceivable cause can do.”

I agreed, and pointed out how the causes stated often fail to come near the real reasons behind the failure. For example, in the recent election, a number of reasons for the outcome are, according to the pundits, responsible: unrest in the heartland, poor campaigning, lack of empathy, voter apathy. Take your choice. There is a pundit espousing each, and they are all right.


Not one yet, C.W. pointed out, has mentioned the possible effect of eight years of hatred spewing into the living rooms and waiting rooms of America from so-called Fox “News.”

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