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Predictions, or "The Three Sillies." [1]

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Date: 2023-11-10  

There was a folktale in my fourth-grade reader that has stuck with me for decades and decades. Entitled “The Three Sillies,” it is predicated on the reaction of a young woman and her family to a ridiculous prediction of disaster to a child not yet even conceived, let alone in any imminent danger. I was reminded of it today when I ran across several articles both in the KOS and elsewhere predicting everything from the results of the present Republican primary season to the mid-term elections in 2026!

Now, I agree whole-heartedly that predictions are necessary for planning, and reasonable people do plan for unwanted events in the future. We don’t really have anything to base our predictions on except history, if we are mindful of it, and our own aspirations and imaginations. Those are pretty weak grounds to build expectations on, not least because they usually leave out the unintended effects of a zillion decisions made on the way to the prediction.

Here’s one example. Nearly all climate predictions depend on a straight-line projection of industrial growth and fossil fuel use into the distant future. Too often the predicted result is at least the extinction of the human race if not the complete erasure of life on earth. That may indeed be the case, and the logic as far as it goes is at least adequate. But there also may come a time when the economic cost of all that pollution and climate damage will bend the curve. In that case, all energy use, both clean and dirty, will begin to fall off because the economic foundations that support it have evaporated. Yet, I have never seen a projection that includes any discussion of the potential effects on fuel use of a major, worldwide, perhaps catastrophic economic slowdown due to climate effects.

Now, lest I be accused of making an untenable prediction myself, I will point out that this is no prediction, it’s barely even a guess. I could be dead wrong. The real concern is that once someone makes these predictions they tend to act as if they are already a fait accompli, something that is sealed and done and complete already, even if it is years, decades, or centuries in the future. If you need an example of the damage that can do, look no further back than the 2016 election.

You see this in politics, business, even your own health, all the time. When there is nothing to go on but an incompletely understood history and some statistical analysis, people will miss important cues to all kinds of things. “Likely” melts into “will” so fast that we often don’t even perceive that it is happening. It doesn’t much matter when it’s little stuff, such as my own decision to never leave home around 2:30 if I can help it because I’m likely to encounter school buses that stop at every driveway along my rural road at that time. That is just time management, even though it is entirely within the realm of possibility that the buses are running early or late and I might get caught in a pokey line of traffic anyhow. But when someone predicts a body blow to our entire society in three or four years based on a straight-line projection from history, statistics, polling, or other marginally reliable source, I become wary and tend to dismiss that as doomsaying. Doom does happen, but let’s be reasonable.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/10/2204917/-Predictions-or-The-Three-Sillies?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

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