Were the Events of 9/11 Truly Predictable?

Humans are a complex race, and the way our brain works differs from that of many other species. Why is it that as humans, we tend to overestimate our intelligence to an extreme? Why is it that we think we're so able, when really, we're not? The human brain works in odd ways, and it can be deathly misleading in many cases.

The hindsight bias, a term which Paul Slovic and Baruch Fischhoff coined as "20/20 hindsight vision" in 1977, is a great example of how the human brain works and why humans are so confident about their intellectual abilities.

The hindsight bias is best defined as the inclination to see events as extremely easy to predict after already becoming aware of their happening. Basically, once we know something already happened, we seem it inevitable to not have already predicted these events. Why is it that after the terrorists hit the twin towers on September 11th, 2001, there were people already working on the case who claimed that the events were predictable? You can't predict something like this! This was the hindsight bias in play, these scientists simply heard news of it, and assumed it was inevitable.

The hindsight bias is also known as the "I-knew-it-all-along phenomon". This phenomon is actually very easy to demonstrate. For example, take two rooms of 30 people (the bigger the group sizes, the more accurate, just to prove this study isn't incorrect) and tell one room that "drinking coffee before you leave for work is excellent because it increases your work ability as well as stimulates your metabolism". The whole audience will agree with you and immediately realize that what you're saying is completely true. Now, take the other room and tell them that "Drinking coffee before leaving for work is extremely unhealthy, it drops your metabolism as well as makes it much more difficult to work". The entire room again, will agree with you. They'll believe that since they've discovered the "truth" that it's so obvious, even though what you've told them is partially wrong, and obviously wrong.

The hindsight bias goes hand in hand with overconfidence. Overconfidence, or exaggeration of our intellectual abilities, is what the hindsight bias drives on. Seeing the truth of a subject is powerful, it gives you a huge sense of over confidence, and in turn will make you believe that you should have, or would have seen it all along, it just never came to you, but now is obvious.

Don't believe it? Check yourself. Look at the word scrambles below.
WREAT -> WATER
ETRYN -> ENTRY
GRABE -> BARGE
How long do you think it would have taken to unscramble those words? Probably just a few seconds? Check yourself and try to unscramble a word with just as many letters. OCHSA.

As you can see, it's definitely much harder to unscramble the word than you have assumed. The answer, by the way, was chaos. Because you had already known the answers to the scrambles prior to the real scramble, you became over-confident in your abilities.

Now that you're aware of the hindsight bias and overconfidence, you may realize how the human mind can really decieve us.