Quotes About Prediction

In 1955 John Von Neumann predicted: Intervention in atmospheric and climatic matters. . . . will unfold on a scale difficult to imagine at present. . . [T]his will merge each nation's affairs with those of every other, more thoroughly than the threat of a nuclear or any other war would have done.

Who would have thought you could see the future by reading a book about the past?

The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's how the smart money bets.

I think someone's about to have a really bad chair day.

Contrary to the popular view, Marx did not predict the formation of communist countries, with which he is so closely identified. Rather, he predicted that capitalism would be utterly successful on a number of fronts.

Selon les diseuses de bonne aventure les cartes rouges et noires ne me laissent pas le choix. Dans ma paume, la ligne de vie est creusée comme une cicatrice. Il n'y aura pas de miracles. Mon sang ne remontera pas sa pente. Ce qui doit m'arriver, m'arrivera implacablement et s'imposera tel un long rêve insupportable. On m'a permis d'espérer, sans que l'espoir me soit imposé par quiconque. Alors, je ne demande que de vivre en paix entre mes frontières.

I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.

feedforward — an understanding of what is going to happen before it happens.[17]

It's possible to predict performance by ignoring all the informational content in the exchange and focusing on a handful of belonging cues.

I saw the Cloud, though I did not foresee the Storm.

the phenomenon of nuclear winter wasn't predicted by environmental scientists until decades after the Cuban missile crisis.

When we imagine future circumstances, we fill in details that won't really come to pass and leave out details that will. When we imagine future feelings, we find it impossible to ignore what we are feeling now and impossible to recognize how we will think about the things that happen later.

Clarke's first law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

We think about the future in a way that no other animal can, does, or ever has, and this simple, ubiquitous, ordinary act is a defining feature of our humanity.

I would say that IQ is the strongest predictor of which field you can get into and hold a job in, whether you can be an accountant, lawyer or nurse, for example.

Regret is a retrospective emotion. It springs into being when we look backward. But we can also use it prospectively and proactively—to gaze into the future, predict what we will regret, and then reorient our behavior based on our forecast.

It's hard to guess how smart the machines are, but a good rule of thumb is that they're always smarter than you think.

Things as they are clash with things as our top-down invariant processes expect them to be. We shove sensation through the filter of the past to make the future predictable. In the process, we lose the present. But because the present is all that exists, we have lost everything in the bargain.

Remember this rule: intuition cannot be trusted in the absence of stable regularities in the environment.

intuition cannot be trusted in the absence of stable regularities in the environment.

The illusion that one has understood the past feeds the further illusion that one can predict and control the future. These illusions are comforting. They reduce the anxiety that we would experience if we allowed ourselves to fully acknowledge the uncertainties of existence.

The illusion that one has understood the past feeds the further illusion that one can predict and control the future.

If you learn one thing from having lived through decades of changing views, it is that all predictions are necessarily false.