章节 23 Hindsight
In 2001, the CIA received intelligence suggesting that Al Qaeda was planning a major attack against the United States. However, the then-director of the CIA failed to relay this information to President George W. Bush, and at the time, no one could have predicted the magnitude of this intelligence failure in history. Years later, during a hearing on accountability, someone pointed out that it was precisely due to the CIA's oversight that critical information was not shared with relevant agencies, resulting in the tragedy of the terrorist attack. However, the subsequent response from the top officials of the CIA seemed to have elevated the issue to a higher, more philosophical level.
K: It seems that the national security and intelligence departments failed to act on the obvious signs of the terrorist attack's main planner being on the monitoring list before the incident occurred.
G: When something happens, people often try to find a reason for it. However, before an event occurs, there are countless possibilities that we have to consider. Currently, we receive more than 3,000 pieces of threat information every day that directly or indirectly target the White House. It's impossible to allocate resources to deal with every single piece of information and every possible threat. If we were to allocate resources to deal with every threat, the cost of preventing terrorist attacks would far exceed the actual losses caused by such attacks.
In the above excerpt from the hearing, it is important to note that there is a difference in the thinking mode we use when analyzing events before and after they occur. Post-event analysis involves reflecting on our experience after the event has fully occurred, while pre-event analysis involves making decisions in the face of uncertainty about the future. After an event has occurred, our instinctive way of thinking is to find the cause. However, even if we identify the cause, it may not necessarily help us make better decisions in the future because we are still dealing with uncertainty. To illustrate this point, let me provide a real-life example.
Take a look at the graph illustrating the exchange rate between the Euro and the US Dollar over the past few years. It's clear that there was a significant decline from point A to point B, lasting for almost a year, during which the Euro depreciated by 3500 basis points. The question that naturally arises is what contributed to this downturn? The prevailing opinions suggest that it was due to the European debt crisis, anticipated slow economic growth and unfavorable economic conditions, as well as a lenient monetary policy. These factors seem to make sense logically and are likely responsible for this downward trend.
Putting aside the aforementioned reasons, if you had the opportunity to go back to point A and decide whether to make a big bet on the impending bear market, the available information at that time was much more diverse than what we have discussed. I remember financial news outlets that were optimistic about the Euro's outlook, all of which seemed logical and well-founded at the time.
In fact, our research team has conducted relevant studies. In early 2014, we invited 10 trainee traders to make judgments on the future trend of the euro exchange rate (around point A in the chart) and estimate their confidence level in their judgments. The results showed that the average/>/>
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