Predicting the Future

On the O&A radio program this morning (it is one of my guilty pleasures), there was a repeat of an old bit about predicting the future and getting it wrong. Anthony read from a list of predictions that did not pan out. Some examples: Lord Kelvin’s announcing the impossibility of heavier than air flight in 1899 and the likelihood that X-rays were a hoax. The CEO of IBM declaring that there was a world market for at most five computers. A silent movie mogul’s wondering who might possibly want to hear actors talking. A Boeing engineer’s prediction that the 10 seater was the biggest aircraft that would ever be built. In each case, credible people with some degree of authority or expertise were incredibly wrong.

When I think back to my childhood in the 1960s, it was widely assumed that we would all have hover cars and live in underwater habitats by now. There would be colonies on the Moon and on Mars and even interstellar travel. Most diseases would be cured or curable. I’m still waiting for my hover car. On the other hand, the more pessimistic predictions of an overpopulation or nuclear war induced dystopia have not materialized either.

In the 1970s, there were a lot of End Times predictions based on the geopolitics of the moment. Hal Lindsey achieved some fame by pitching the idea that the apocalypse was right around the corner and that the US and the USSR were the major players. The collapse of the USSR was not part of his scheme, nor did he predict the current “clash of civilizations” so dear to apocalyptic preachers these days. I suppose one of these days some preacher will come close to getting something right. You’d think that the Millerites’ Great Disappointment would have made folks leery of preachers who make a living out of telling folks that God is fixing to kill them.

A lot of people make predictions all the time and are even paid to do so, but it seems to me that a lot of them are not held accountable or tracked in terms of their success or failure. Economists, for example, don’t have batting averages, so to speak, to indicate how often they have gotten it right. Pundits and politicians can get it wrong time and time again without being called on it. The promoters of the war in Iraq, for example, are still making predictions and being published in major media outlets. Shouldn’t their columns be labeled with some indicator of how prescient or misguided they have been? Shouldn’t government spokescritters have to wear a placard showing their percentage of truth telling?

If I were a futurist, I would be sure to make my predictions far enough ahead that I won’t be around to be called on them. “A billion years hence, we will no longer use hover cars but travel through the medium of pure thought.” I could also make them vague and ambiguous enough, like Nostradamus, that they can be made to fit any circumstances that arise. “A ruler will emerge who will call himself a peacemaker but who will do battle on the ancient plain.” I could also make lots of inconsistent predictions in the hopes that one of them will pan out and I will be cited as prescient. “The Democratic/GOP candidate will win in 2008.”
Or I could just start calling myself an economist or a pundit, in which case I need not concern myself with my accuracy.