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历史证明，人类总是无法预见近在眼前的浩劫。当我们认为自己生活在平安、稳定的天堂时，灾难就会突然不期而至。在黑天鹅事件蠢蠢欲动的当下，我们该如何学习过去的教训，预测即将到来的灾难？
测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：
ethnic ['eθnɪk] adj. 民族的，种族的
fallible ['fæləbl] adj. 易错的，可能犯错的
forestal [fɔː'stɔːl]l vt. 领先，先发制人
banality [bə'næləti] n. 平凡，陈腐
exploit [ɪk'splɔɪt] v. 开发；利用
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When Nassim Nicholas Taleb was a teenager in Lebanon in 1975, an ethnic civil war broke out. Locals were baffleD.They had thought they lived in a “stable paradise”. Once the unforeseen catastrophe began, even Taleb's grandfather, the deputy prime minister, “did not seem to know what was going to happen any more than his driver, Mikhail”, wrote Taleb in his 2007 classic, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.
In 1940, when Daniel Kahneman was a Jewish boy living in Paris, the Germans invaded France. Kahneman's family decided to stay put. Then came the Holocaust. While the family was in hiding, Kahneman's father could not get treatment for his diabetes, and dieD.Kahneman was left wondering why humans fail to foresee catastrophe.
Black Swan has just been reissueD.Almost simultaneously, Michael Lewis has published The Undoing Project, about Kahneman's intellectual collaboration with fellow psychologist Amos Tversky. Both books share an argument: people make bad judgments and terrible predictions. It's a timely point. The risk of some kind of catastrophe — armed conflict, natural disaster, and/or democratic collapse — appears to have risen. The incoming US president has talked about first use of nuclear weapons, and seems happy to let Russia invade nearby countries. Most other big states are led by militant nationalists. Meanwhile, the polar ice caps are melting fast. How can we fallible humans avert catastrophe?
Today's elites are often mocked for failing to foresee the financial crisis of 2008 but, in fact, such blindness is standarD.In 1914, few people expected the first world war: the historian Niall Ferguson has shown that bond prices held up that summer, meaning that investors didn't foresee higher government borrowing. Forecasters also missed the Holocaust, China's Cultural Revolution and September 11.
Our western generation is particularly ill-equipped to foresee catastrophes, because our countries have hardly experienced any since 1945. （We tend to forget our various close shaves with nuclear war, accidental and otherwise.） Now we are like Taleb's famous turkey. Every day, he gets fed by a nice farmer. The turkey's risk analysts make a forecast: based on past trends, he will keep getting fatter. Then, just before Thanksgiving…
How not to be that turkey? Taleb has some tips:
• You can't know which catastrophe will happen, but expect that any day some catastrophe coulD.In Tversky's words: “Surprises are expected.” Better to worry than die blasé. Mobilise politically to forestall catastrophe.
• Don't presume that future catastrophes will repeat the forms of past catastrophes. The only catastrophes we seem able to imagine are ones that have happened before. After September 11, the US re-engineered itself to prevent another September 11.Now the cliché is that we're back in the 1930s. Even Donald Trump, complaining about US intelligence agencies, asked, “Are we living in Nazi Germany?” However, we need to expand our imaginations. The next catastrophe may take an unprecedented form.
• Don't follow the noise. Terrorist attacks and Trump's tweets are spectacular. But some catastrophes unfold silently: climate change, or people dying after they lose their jobs or their health insurance. （The financial crisis was associated with about 260,000 extra deaths from cancer in developed countries alone, estimated a study in The Lancet.）
• Ignore banalities. Most westerners instinctively tune out serious news because they have learnt that it rarely affects their lives. In the US in particular, so-called “TV news” is, in fact, entertainment. It fixates on “stories” such as Trump's spat with the actor Meryl Streep. But these distractions have become dangerous. We now need to stretch and bore ourselves with important stuff.
• Strengthen democratic institutions. The only western state designed specifically to ward off catastrophe is the Federal Republic of Germany. Unelected German judges are charged with defending the constitution against the people, if necessary. By contrast, France now exists under an endless state of emergency. If Marine Le Pen becomes president in May, she'll have a fairly free hand.
• Listen to older people who have experienced catastrophes. Taleb notes that elephant tribes often rely on elderly females to assess threats.
• Be conservative. Many Americans hope Trump will “shake things up”. As Noam Chomsky says, the risk is that he will. Often it's smarter to maintain a flawed status quo. In Taleb's words: “Don't mess with complex systems, because we don't understand them.”
Stock markets hit all-time highs after Trump's election. What could possibly go wrong?
请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：
A.Human's inability to foresee catastrophe.
B.The Holocaust during World War II.
C.The unforeseen catastrophes.
D.Michael Lewis's biography.
答案 (1)
A.Many large countries are led by militant nationalists.
B.US president talked about invading nearby countries.
C.North Korea threatened to use nuclear weapons.
D.The polar ice caps have been gradually collapsing.
答案 (2)
A.they often mock elites for for failing to foresee the financial crisis.
B.they are used to tuning out serious news and ignoring its danger.
C.they have hardly experienced any catastrophes in their life.
D.they are firmly convinced that they are living in a stable paradise.
答案 (3)
A.We can foresee future catastrophes by studying past catastrophes.
B.Serious news are boring but we have to pay much attention to it.
C.We need to give special attention to prevent terrorist attacks.
D.German is the only country which is fully equipped for catastrophes.
答案 (4)
(1) 答案：C.The unforeseen catastrophes.解释：Taleb在他2007年出版了著作《黑天鹅：不可能事件的影响》。
(2) 答案：A.Many large countries are led by militant nationalists.解释：出现某些灾难的风险正在增加。美国总统已经提起过使用核武器，并对俄罗斯入侵邻国无动于衷。世界上其他大国大多被好战的民族主义者领导着，同时，极地的冰川正在迅速融化。
(3) 答案：C.they have hardly experienced any catastrophes in their life.解释：我们这一代西方人预见灾难的能力尤其不足，因为我们的国家自1945年以来几乎没有经历过大的灾难。
(4) 答案：B.Serious news are boring but we have to pay much attention to it.解释：大多数西方人会本能地忽视严肃新闻，因为它们很少影响到我们的生活。这种漠视变得很危险。