Prediction is in effect the conjectural anticipation of further sensory evidence for a foregone conclusion. When a prediction comes out wrong, what we have is a divergent and troublesome sensory stimulation that tends to inhibit that once foregone conclusion, and so to extinguish the sentence-to-sentence conditionings that led to the prediction. Thus it is that theories wither when their predictions fail.
Willard Van Orman Quine - Word and Object (1960)
How to charlatans get round that one? By making sure that their predictions always nestle safely in the future. Their predictions never come out wrong and wither because the future they predict never quite arrives. It isn’t difficult to spot, we’ve known about it forever and we also know that people who do it are either charlatans or deluded or –
Or elites. Elites have always maintained a certain fondness for conjectural anticipation which somehow always comes down hard on the peasants.
Today, we weary peasants see celebrities and politicians making endless conjectural anticipations while promoting the climate game and more recently the pandemic game. Their sentence-to-sentence conditioning doesn’t wither when their predictions fail because they only talk among themselves. The sentence-to-sentence conditioning isn’t extinguished in the manner Quine described.
It isn’t stupidity or intransigence - they only talk among themselves.
4 comments:
I have wondered in the past if it would be a good idea to have an independent forecasts database where (especially) economists and politicians would have their names and forecasts recorded, and then eventually the outcomes of their forecasts recorded too - perhaps including their excuses too.
None of this wishy washy 'the sky could fall' stuff. Hard numbers and dates. So if you found that some politician refused to have their 'forecasts' recorded, or if you found that some economists were persistently wrong, perhaps, just perhaps, we could break out of the breathlessly announced, immediately forgotten burble.
Did someone just mention the Met Office?
"The Nobel Prize for Karikó and Weissman may boost confidence in mRNA vaccine research. The Nobel Committee hopes so, too: a Nobel Prize for these vaccines against Covid-19 could encourage hesitant people to opt for vaccination in the reassurance that it is effective and safe, explained panel member Olle Kämpe." (From the Eugyppius substack.)
That is, the Nobel in Medicine and Physiology is now officially corrupted as panel member Olle Kämpe has boasted. Is that a case of only talking among themselves? It must be: "effective and safe" indeed!
DJ - I agree, keep some kind of permanent record and if you are not recorded it's just rhetoric. The records are generally there, but only a limited number of people seem to be aware of it.
Jannie - the Met Office can get our local weather forecast wrong over 24 hours. Even less sometimes. Global climate 30 years hence - no problem.
dearieme - I've been wondering if any arm-twisting was involved, but maybe it wasn't even necessary.
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