The investor Nassim Taleb explains how markets can be blindsided by improbable but consequential events.

Nemoto said, "If you were to go back in time and try to change the past, you would damage the universe, erasing a whole series of consequential events.

The year 1979 marked a consequential event in the evolution of Freightliner, and of the whole trucking and truck manufacturing industries.

This effect is called socially-shared RIF, and can even occur with flashbulb memories, which are memories of circumstances in which one learned about consequential events.

The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities)

His claim is that almost all consequential events in history come from the unexpected - yet humans later convince themselves that these events are explainable in hindsight.

It was a consequential event in 1607, to be sure, but we shouldn't confuse it with the beginning of the American experience.

Whatever sports fans feel about that, television has also brought audiences the ability to follow other, more consequential events as they happen.

And it doesn't require an urgent and hugely consequential event to flourish in the news media.

But this year, campaigns competed strenuously; several described the poll as the most consequential political event of the year.