predictions

I have been reading quite a bit of news lately. I tend to enjoy getting overviews of the past year and predictions of the upcoming year. The overviews remind me of what I can and, more importantly, what I cannot predict. The predictions, since they are typically all over the board, remind me that few others have a clue, either. People, even when they are considered experts, are really so bad at predicting what is going to happen when that when anyone accidentally stumbles onto a painfully obvious prediction that happens to be accurate, that person is heralded as a genius for life.

Predictions in world affairs are difficult for two reasons. First, and most obviously, a very scant few people understand most of the variables that affect where the economy is going to go, or whether an armed occupation will backfire, or whether the arctic will resemble a sauna in a hundred years. Many people can identify the things that will impact what happens, but predicting what the value of those variables will be that will impact the larger prediction is a challenge as well. Second, most predictions rely on understanding irrational people who behave irrationally. People cannot be relied on to know what is in their best interests, let alone to act on it, which is an assumption that most economic theory relies on. What is popular today may not be tomorrow just because peoples' whims have changed for no real good reason. That people cannot be reliably predicted is one of the few things that I can reliably predict.