THERE IS BIG MONEY IN PREDICTIONS, BUT NOT IN ACCURATE PREDICTIONS | 2003-11-01
Experts on Wall Street get paid billions for their predictions about stock trends. The predictions of these experts have repeatedly been put up against such things as monkeys hitting buttons randomly. The monkeys are always neck and neck with the experts.
We still pay those experts a fortune, not because they do anything useful, but because they have Experience.
There is a whole industry called Futurology. It is financed by grant money. Nobody ever asks a Futurologist if he was ever right. To be a professional futurologist you must make predictions that sound right to the people who control the grants.
The only prediction that matters to a Futurologist is whether Professor Fuzz, who is on the Grants Committee, will want a Marxist Future or a Progressive Future.
If a Futurology applicant can come up with a good case for Global Warming, the grants committees will feed him well for the rest of his life.
If you look at an application for a job as a Futurologist you will not find one word in it about any accurate prediction that the applicant ever made. He will say he has studied Futurology, and he will detail how many years he has spent in whatever field he is going to tell the future of.