When the Titanic set sail from Southampton on April 10, 1912, bound for New York, it was called "unsinkable." This was before that chance encounter in the North Atlantic with a large iceberg. You know how that movie ended.

Many people died, of course, because there were too few lifeboats. But even if the luxury liner had four times as many, the Titanic still would have ended up on the bottom of the ocean, done in by a captain more concerned with speed than safety — and that iceberg.

This simple reality, however, obscures a broader truth.