A failure of imagination is a circumstance wherein something seemingly predictable (particularly from hindsight) and undesirable was not planned for.
The field of epistemology studies knowledge and human understanding, and failures of understanding. Failure of imagination is related to Unknown unknowns and Black swan theory, popularized by Nassim Taleb in his 2007 book The Black Swan, describing unexpected or unpredicted incidents with significant negative impact.
Read more about Failure Of Imagination: Intelligence Failures of Imagination and The 9/11 Attacks, Accidents Related Failures of Imagination
Famous quotes related to failure of imagination:
“War is bestowed like electroshock on the depressive nation; thousands of volts jolting the system, an artificial galvanizing, one effect of which is loss of memory. War comes at the end of the twentieth century as absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to ‘feel good’ about themselves, their country, is a measure of that failure.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)