False prophecies
For most of the human history, information from the past have been useful for making judgments about the future. Those with higher competence in qualitative predictions to life saving attributes – such as the probability of food in certain direction, days before the next rain and the presence of wild animals in certain spaces – did well and survived. Generally, such predictions were made based on observable information and historical precedence – some handed down by the previous generation. Prophets are considered superior in most cultures and religions – and for good reasons. Knowledge about the future is highly valuable for survival and success. The number of prophets per capita, however, was small compared to today.
In the modern world, prophets are found everywhere. However, the quality of predictions seem to have declined quite substantially. There are many reasons for this.
(1) Computers have helped prophets shut down their brains and rely on data and fancy extrapolations into the future.
(2) The cost of entry to the prophecy business now-a-days is very low. Anybody with a blog or website can easily start the business.
(3) Prophets are not held accountable continuously. For example, economic and stock market forecasters, who are expected to be right 50% of the time with no innate capability can skew the appearance of this by going quiet when they are wrong and marketing vigorously when they are right. Media and technology now allow the creation of the perception of a positive skew to incompetent prophets.
(4) Today's population, with vastly lower level of competence compared to their forefathers from many 1000s of years ago on almost every dimension, have come to rely on prophecies for almost everything. In effect, they run their lives to suboptimal outcomes based on prophecies –such as those present in stock markets, health, energy and others.
The most important reason why today's prophets are less potent than their predecessors is that the slope of change they are facing is steep and discontinuous. Most of today's prophets use extrapolation based on observable data – some have been worrying about running out of oil for nearly 100 years and others see a world full of people unable to find a spot to stand. Some see people running out of food and others water. Extrapolation from past data is a dangerous game – a fact that was well understood by competent forecasters of the past and something today's prophets are simply unable to comprehend.
As today's prophets look forward to the end of the world in 2012 (many of the same people were ready to call it quits in Y2K) advising people to buy and hug "gold," they may want to consider that the social media now can record and analyze their prophecies more systematically. So, it is becoming more dangerous to predict the start of wars and the end of the world for the prophets.
