Google confirms it, year after year people forget how poorly they can predict the future. I’ve seen a flurry of 2009 predictions come across my screen, which is not surprising as evidenced by the chart. However it is supremely annoying, nonetheless.
Where is the culpability? People who’s predictions pan out claim victory. The other side quietly accepts defeat, rarely calling attention to their misguided “foresight.”
I’m no longer fooled by probability, and neither should you.
Consider a game: Start with 64 participants in a single elimination tournament. Each round, participants are paired. Before flipping a coin, paired players negotiate who will win if it lands heads and who will win if it lands tails. After each flip, the winner advances, new pairs are formed and the cycle repeats. From 64 players, to 32, on down to the final 2 and eventual winner. The winner of the tournament won 7 times in a row. Was he smart? Absolutely not. He was P(1 % (2^7)) lucky!
Would you ask him how he won? His advice would be worthless. If you asked him to win again, and he does, I’d check the weighting of his coin not the weight of his words.
If you throw in enough predictions, statistics dictate that some will be correct. Those that are were on point are a gift of probability, not foresight, which make them trite.
It would be nice if people properly labeled their opinions about the next 365 days but apparently no one does:
</rantoff>
