Black Swans

[lurch]

I was reading an article today in new scientist that I thought had some relevance to the sci community. In the article a mathematician talks about his research into what he refers to as "black swans",random events that can have life changing rammifications.As I understood it is ,the basic theme of his work is that we don't know shit about what the future holds and our recolection of significant past events is conveniently tailored to suit our rationalisations.
On these forums it is a popular pastime to speculate on the time frames for future cures (10 years ,15 years?) and many of us mentally replay the events surrounding our accidents as if we had some degree of control.
I choose to be hopeful about our future ,despite pessimistic predictions, because ,as it turns out,most predictions are bullshit.
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge136.html