"Why "connecting the dots" is the wrong way to think about stopping terrorism"
Good post from Cory Doctrow over at Boing Boing:
"Bruce Schneier has a great op-ed on CNN on why it's stupid to talk about whether the FBI should have "connected the dots" on the Boston bomber. As Bruce points out, it's only in hindsight that there's a neat trail of dots to connect, a narrative we can make sense of. Before the fact, it's a hairy, swirling hotchpotch of mostly irrelevancies, and it's only the "narrative fallacy" that makes it seem like a neat story in retrospect. The risk here is that intelligence agencies and the press will push this fallacy as grounds for taking away more rights and more privacy in order to "connect the dots" next time. "
SNIP
"The television show "Person of Interest" is fiction, not fact."
"There's a name for this sort of logical fallacy: hindsight bias."
Whole post here:
http://boingboing.net/2013/05/03/why-connecting-the-dots-is.html
Original OP-ED
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/02/opinion/schneier-boston-bombing/index.html