Roko,
I think if you read Eli's chapter on biases, proposing solutions tends to cause a version of the anchoring bias, even if you consciously attempt to emotionally divorce yourself from them.
I'd love to know the loose timeframe we're working with here, though, and yeah, I realize sometimes a day's work turns into a month. If I had an idea, I could go back and start from post one, and time it to be up to speed at about the right time.
Don't know if I can blame bad form on making 78 McSkillet Burritos.
That morning I was a fine display of generalizing from fictional evidence.
Most salient among my initial thoughts seeing the buildings on TV: that looks like the end of Fight Club.
Then on the drive in I was listening to NPR. A reporter was live on air and on site as the plane struck the Pentagon. From that I extrapolated (momentarily) the existence of a far larger plot.
Had this blog only existed back then.
However, the most impressive reaction I'm aware of came from an high school chum of my mother, a woman who (Mom not chum) has, with the onset of her dotage, taken up appeals to authority as a reaction to stressful scenarios. She emailed him within 2 or 3 days of the event with a simple, "what do you think will happen?"
He replied: "I think we'll invade Iraq."