Predicting the Future (or Not)

Just last December, many people expected the world to end because the Mayan calendar's "long count" ended on December 21, 2012, and the inference was made that the Maya therefore did not see any time beyond that date. The further inference was made that that implied that the world would end on that date.

There have been many other predictions of the end of the world. There was one fairly recently that got a lot of publicity (I don't remember the name of the minister who made the prediction; forgive me for not taking the trouble to find it out but it's not that relevant here).

And predictions of the end of the world have been going on for a long time. The year 1000, the end of the "millennium," was expected by many to bring the Second Coming of Christ and thus the end of the world.

Needless to say, in spite of all these predictions of doom, we are all still here.

And there have continually been economic predictions of disaster: the bond market is going to crash, the stock market is going to crash. At one point, a couple years ago, I saw a very amusing sign in downtown Chicago: "Economists have successfully predicted 13 out of the last 7 recessions."

Only a very small percentage of these economic predictions or forecasts have turned out to be true. (As implied, there've been a few—very few—notable exceptions.)

Let’s look at scientific predictions. A lot of those have been colossally wrong. I saw an interesting list of those, once. The only one I remember: the great scientist Lord Kelvin predicted, "The atom will never be split."

Natural phenomena such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tornadoes can be predicted poorly, if at all. (I think the state of the science has advanced but only to the point that earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tornadoes can only be predicted once certain precursors have been observed. Unfortunately the current state of the art is that weather professionals can give no more than 20 minutes advance notice of a tornado.)

Let's look at weather prediction--usually called "forecasting." That definitely has improved a great deal but still has its limitations. You could say it depends on extrapolation, by which I mean, you see a storm and you just calculate where it would go if it continued on the same track. That's the method also used with hurricanes and there it's somewhat less of an accurate prediction because hurricanes can change their course.

So many predictions herald some sort of doom (getting back to end-of-the-world scenarios) and I find it amazing that so many people take them seriously. Which is not to say that some disaster could not occur that would bring very widespread devastation to Earth with loss of life. The meteor that recently struck Eastern Russia had not been foreseen and that fact is alarming. It could have been bigger than it was, it could have fallen more vertically, etc. Any one of these conditions could have resulted in more destruction and even great loss of life.

Many attempts to predict the future are fantasy, wishful thinking. Who has not dreamt of making a fortune by knowing what will happen with the stock market or knowing which horse is going to win the race against long odds?

So, aside from the limited predictions which science can offer us, there is no knowing the future. When it's election time, I pay no attention to any predictions: I tell myself that we will know in the event, and I can wait until then.

Update, August 14 2013
Here is an article on wrong predictions: http://www.mandatory.com/2013/08/05/10-of-the-worst-predictions-in-history/1


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