a story in Nassim Taleb's the black swan illustrates this automatic search for causality. He reprots that bond prices initially rose on the day of Saddam's capture in his hiding place in Trap. Investoers were apparently seeking safer assets that morning, and the Bloomberg News service flashed this headline: U.S. treasures rise; hussein capture may not curb terrorism. Half an hour later, bond prices fell back and the revised headline read: U.S. treasuries fall' hussein capture boostes allure of risky assets. Obviously, Hussein's capture was the major event of the day, and because of the way the automatic search for causes shapes our thinking, that event was destined to be the explanation of whatever happened in the market on that day. The two headlines look superficially like explanations of thwat happened in the market, but a statement that can explain two contradictory outcomes explains nothing at all. in fact, all the headlines do is satisfy our need for coherence: a large event is supposed to have consequences, and consequences need causes to explain them. we have limited information about hwat happened on a day, and system 1 is adept at finding a coherent causal story that links the gragments of knowledge at its disposal.
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