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of sometimes alarming or mysterious messages and transcripts that would later prove misleading or insignificant. And even if we focused on the reports that hindsight tells us were important, before the attack there existed for each of those reports a reasonable alternative explanation that did not point toward a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. For example, the request to divide Pearl Harbor into five areas was similar in style to other requests that had gone to Japanese agents in Panama, Vancouver, San Francisco, and Portland, Oregon. The loss of radio contact was also not unheard of and had in the past often meant simply that the warships were in home waters and communicating via telegraphic landlines. Moreover, even if you believed a broadening of the war was impending, many signs pointed toward an attack elsewhere—in the Philippines, on the Thai peninsula, or on Guam, for example. There were not, to be sure, as many red herrings as water molecules encountered by a molecule of dye, but there were enough to obscure a clear vision of the future.

After Pearl Harbor seven committees of the U.S. Congress delved into the process of discovering why the military had missed all the “signs” of a coming attack. Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall, for one, drew heavy criticism for a May 1941 memo to President Roosevelt in which he wrote that “the Island of Oahu, due to its fortification, its garrison and its physical characteristic, is believed to be the strongest fortress in the world” and reassured the president that, in case of attack, enemy forces would be intercepted “within 200 miles of their objective…by all types of bombardment.” General Marshall was no fool, but neither did he have a crystal ball. The study of randomness tells us that the crystal ball view of events is possible, unfortunately, only after they happen. And so we believe we know why a film did well, a candidate won an election, a storm hit, a stock went down, a soccer team lost, a new product failed, or a disease took a turn for the worse, but such expertise is empty in the sense that it is of little use in predicting when a film will do well, a candidate will win an election, a storm will hit, a stock will go down, a soccer team will lose, a new product will fail, or a disease will take a turn for the worse.

It is easy to concoct stories explaining the past or to become confident about dubious scenarios for the future. That there are traps in such endeavors doesn’t mean we should not undertake them. But we can work to immunize ourselves against our errors of intuition. We can learn to view both explanations and prophecies with skepticism. We can focus on the ability to react to events rather than relying on the ability to predict them, on qualities like flexibility, confidence, courage, and perseverance. And we can place more importance on our direct impressions of people than on their well-trumpeted past accomplishments. In these ways we can resist forming judgments in our automatic deterministic framework.

IN MARCH 1979 another famously unanticipated chain of events occurred, this one at a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.7 It resulted in a partial meltdown of the core, in which the nuclear reaction occurs, threatening to release into the environment an alarming dose of radiation. The mishap began when a cup or so of water emerged through a leaky seal from a water filter called a polisher. The leaked water entered a pneumatic system that drives some of the plant’s instruments, tripping two valves. The tripped valves shut down the flow of cold water to the plant’s steam generator—the system responsible for removing the heat generated by the nuclear reaction in the core. An emergency water pump then came on, but a valve in each of its two pipes had been left in a closed position after maintenance two days earlier. The pumps therefore were pumping water uselessly toward a dead end. Moreover, a pressure-relief valve also failed, as did a gauge in the control room that ought to have shown that the valve was not working.

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