How the Internet Makes the Improbable Into the New Normal

Hugh Pickens writes "A burglar gets stuck in a chimney, a truck driver in a head on collision is thrown out the front window and lands on his feet, walks away; a wild antelope knocks a man off his bike; a candle at a wedding sets the bride's hair on fire; someone fishing off a backyard dock catches a huge man-size shark. Now Kevin Kelly writes that in former times these unlikely events would be private, known only as rumors, stories a friend of a friend told, easily doubted and not really believed but today they are on YouTube, seen by millions. 'Every minute a new impossible thing is uploaded to the internet and that improbable event becomes just one of hundreds of extraordinary events that we'll see or hear about today,' writes Kelly. 'As long as we are online — which is almost all day many days — we are illuminated by this compressed extraordinariness. It is the new normal.' But when the improbable dominates the archive to the point that it seems as if the library contains only the impossible, then the 'black swans' don't feel as improbable. 'To the uninformed, the increased prevalence of improbable events will make it easier to believe in impossible things,' concludes Kelly. 'A steady diet of coincidences makes it easy to believe they are more than just coincidences.'"

Re:black swans are not improbable

[mcgrew]

In case that wasn't a joke and for those who didn't click the wikipedia link:

The black swan theory [wikipedia.org] or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that is a surprise (to the observer), has a major effect, and after the fact is often inappropriately rationalized with the benefit of hindsight.

The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain:

        The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology
        The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities)
        The psychological biases that make people individually and collectively blind to uncertainty and unaware of the massive role of the rare event in historical affairs

Unlike the earlier philosophical "black swan problem," [wikipedia.org] the "black swan theory" refers only to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence and their dominant role in history. Such events, considered extreme outliers, collectively play vastly larger roles than regular occurrences.[1]

Re:Even things as improbable...

[jimmetry]

Posting the first post as an "Anonymous Coward" has never been considered improbable.

The Videos

[Anonymous Coward]

A burglar gets stuck in a chimney [huffingtonpost.com]

A truck driver in a head on collision is thrown out the front window and lands on his feet, walks away [youtube.com]

A wild antelope knocks a man off his bike [youtube.com]

A candle at a wedding sets the bride's hair on fire [youtube.com]

Someone fishing off a backyard dock catches a huge man-size shark [youtube.com]

Re:God and Star Wars

[mikael]

I do find the study of modern urban legends fascinating. Back in the 1960's there was an urban legend that the original "Avengers" series had did some trial runs using color film reels as an experiment. Nobody ever saw or heard more about those reels for decades. They looked round all the film archives at the studio and other places, but the studio has thrown them out all those years ago. Then one day, a woman is clearing out an old shed owned by her husband when she came across some flat metal cans. She didn't know what they were, called in some studio engineers, and they identified them as those very reels.

Even in a modern computer office or lab, there will be somebody that remembers that some contractor or senior engineer did some experimental work years ago before leaving. Nobody can find the work until years later, when some old server powered down for reliability is found and powered up again.