It is not difficult to concoct explanations for the discrepancy between promise and reality.
Neurologists also happened upon the mind's tendency to concoct explanations for puzzling events.
Most successful societies construct their narratives backward: Theorists concoct explanations for the achieved successes of these societies.
Nevertheless, people tend to concoct explanations for them after the fact, which makes them appear more predictable, and less random, than they are.
In his 2007 best-seller "The Black Swan", Nassim Nicholas Taleb argued that such excursions from the normal have three things in common: they are outliers, being wholly unexpected; their impact is extreme; and, in hindsight, we rationalise them by concocting explanations that make them seem (or so we like to think) predictable.
Mr Taleb defines a Black Swan as an event that is unexpected, has an extreme impact and is made to seem predictable by explanations concocted afterwards.
To sophisticated sports fans, this defense may seem as believable as some of the explanations concocted by Ring Lardner's fictional pitcher, Alibi Ike.
The left hemisphere was just concocting an explanation, Dr. Gazzaniga said.
Prosecutors say that after the fact, she and Mr. Bacanovic concocted a false explanation for the sale -- an agreement to sell if the share price fell below $60.
In a statement, The A.P. said that Mr. Fairey "concocted" this latest explanation to "spin those bad acts in the best light possible to the court and the public".
The revelation that Rhodes urged Rice to deny that there was a broader failure of administration policy does not lend credence to, much less prove, that the video explanation was concocted.
