Quotes About Predictions

I'm the worst at picking what movies are going to do well. I have no idea. I'm really surprised if a movie I like does well.

The resemblance of the signs of the zodiac to the animals after which they are named... is as unimpressive as the predictions of astrologers.

I believe that economists put decimal points in their forecasts to show they have a sense of humor.

Spookier still, Bell's theorem has now been proven time after time after time. It took a few years to create lab equipment sensitive enough and accurate enough to make the necessary measurements, and they ultimately used photons rather than electrons for the experiments, but since the 1970s physicists have repeatedly confirmed the theory's predictions in the laboratory. Einstein and company was wrong; the Copenhagen gang was right. We create reality.

Choices whose outcomes matter even though they are neither deterministic nor completely random surround us all the time. So it is not surprising that in all human societies, entire professions have been based on the making of such predictions—think of astrologers, stockbrokers, professional gamblers, weather forecasters, or . . . politicians.

the basic rules of serious futurology are (a) look for the large trends and analyze how they work, (b) construct models to suggest how different trends may interact, and (c) be alert for countertrends or other factors that might falsify or cut across the predictions suggested by long trends and simple modeling.

Shoddy explanations that yield correct predictions are two a penny, as UFO enthusiasts, conspiracy-theorists and pseudo-scientists of every variety should (but never do) bear in mind.

One consequence of this tradition of criticism was the emergence of a methodological rule that a scientific theory must be testable (though this was not made explicit at first). That is to say, the theory must make predictions which, if the theory were false, could be contradicted by the outcome of some possible observation. Thus, although scientific theories are not derived from experience, they can be tested by experience – by observation or experiment

There is an excellent way to make predictions without the slightest risk of error: predict the past.

The game of investing is one of making better predictions about the future than other people. How are you going to do that? One way is to limit your tries to areas of competence. If you try to predict the future of everything, you attempt too much. You're going to fail through lack of specialization.1 Charlie Munger

Damn you," said Arithon. In a shattering change of mood, he was laughing. "You have it. But what's my word against the grandiloquent predictions of a maudlin and drunken prophet?" "Maybe everything," Felirin finished gently. "You're too young to live without dreams.

Projections are just bullshit. They're just guesses.

Joseph was hardly the first prophet of America's Second Great Awakening—the tide of religious fervor that washed across the country at the start of the nineteenth century—to traffic in millenarian predictions, and he wasn't the last. But he was the most successful.

I would watch the Oscars and every award show with my parents. I would make lists of who was going to win. I'd be doing Oscar predictions months ahead of time, and not only for the Oscars, for the Grammys. This is just what excited me as a kid.

Einstein had two new predictions from general relativity. One was that light would bend. That was tested in 1919, and basically, he was proven right. The second prediction was gravitational waves, which took us 100 years to prove. The theory itself, which is thought by most to be rather obscure, you use every day, probably.

It is not prudent to attempt to switch and swap asset classes based on short-term market predictions.

predictions can't vary more than the thing being forecast.

She must still discover that myths are basic truths twisted into mnemonics, instructions posted from the past, memories waiting to become predictions.

Polls could be self-fulfilling prophecies, shaping reality as much as they described it.

The Third Turning has been the Culture Wars, an era that began with Reagan's mid-1980s Morning in America and is due to expire around the middle of the Oh-Oh decade, eight or ten years from now. Amid the glitz of the early Reagan years, no one predicted that the nation was entering an era of national drift and institutional decay. But that's where we are.

R0 explains and, to some limited degree, it predicts. It defines the boundary between a small cluster of weird infections in a tropical village somewhere, flaring up, burning out, and a global pandemic. It came from George MacDonald.

The brain is an organ that builds models and makes creative predictions, but its models and predictions can as easily be specious as valid. Our brains are always looking at patterns and making analogies. If correct correlations cannot be found, the brain is more than happy to accept false ones. Pseudoscience, bigotry, faith, and intolerance are often rooted in false analogy.

Intelligence and understanding started as a memory system that fed predictions into the sensory system. These predictions are the essense of understanding. To know something means that you can make predictions about it.

In the current scenario of climate change, predictions of extreme weather events are becoming difficult.