Re:Ask HN: What other low-probability high-impact events are...
by ErrantX on Tuesday June 15, 2010 @03:48PM
(#1433668)
Everyone who cared knew that this sort of thing could happen, but the risk was widely perceived as tolerable.
There are billions of things that could happen, that might happen or that will eventually happen given enough time. We should reasonably ignore those or it starts to get silly :)
I think what you are really talking about are "Elephant in the Room" problems. Things which shouldn't happen, or are low probability, but end up being caused by bad management or human error.
If someone had asked this question 6 months ago would anyone have brought up deepwater oil drilling? I somehow doubt it. Finding these scenarios is difficult, if not impossible, because they rely on things that don't get reported till it has happened.
There are billions of things that could happen, that might happen or that will eventually happen given enough time. We should reasonably ignore those or it starts to get silly :)
I think what you are really talking about are "Elephant in the Room" problems. Things which shouldn't happen, or are low probability, but end up being caused by bad management or human error.
If someone had asked this question 6 months ago would anyone have brought up deepwater oil drilling? I somehow doubt it. Finding these scenarios is difficult, if not impossible, because they rely on things that don't get reported till it has happened.