Future predictions repository

Awakening eras, crisis eras, crisis wars, generational financial crashes, as applied to historical and current events
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Nathan G
Posts: 127
Joined: Sat May 17, 2014 7:03 pm

Future predictions repository

Post by Nathan G »

Hello,

So, I'm not normally interested so much in predictions of the future as I am in correcting perceptions in history, but specific future predictions seem to be a dominant theme on this website, and I am curious. So with that being said, is there a central repository of event-specific predictions John has made over the years? Or are they scattered around the website mixed among philosophical and political musings?

What I hope to find are predictions grouped by time period, either year-specific (which I imagine may be more rare), decade-specific (i.e., X will happen in the 2020s), or century-specific (i.e., X will happen by 2100). I don't think it's important to record how accurate the predictions were so far, as that is open to speculation.

If such a repository doesn't exist, perhaps John or someone else could post them to this thread, like how I compiled the Crisis Lists earlier.

Thanks

John
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Joined: Sat Sep 20, 2008 12:10 pm
Location: Cambridge, MA USA
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Re: Future predictions repository

Post by John »

Nathan G wrote: > Hello,

> So, I'm not normally interested so much in predictions of the
> future as I am in correcting perceptions in history, but specific
> future predictions seem to be a dominant theme on this website,
> and I am curious. So with that being said, is there a central
> repository of event-specific predictions John has made over the
> years? Or are they scattered around the website mixed among
> philosophical and political musings?

> What I hope to find are predictions grouped by time period, either
> year-specific (which I imagine may be more rare), decade-specific
> (i.e., X will happen in the 2020s), or century-specific (i.e., X
> will happen by 2100). I don't think it's important to record how
> accurate the predictions were so far, as that is open to
> speculation.

> If such a repository doesn't exist, perhaps John or someone else
> could post them to this thread, like how I compiled the Crisis
> Lists earlier.

> Thanks
It's a good idea, but it would be a lot of work, and I'm really not up
for it. Remember that I do all of this work by myself, with no help
and no pay, and I have to be selective about the tasks that I take on.
I have written a couple of "In-Depth Analysis" articles that summarize
predictions (see the left-hand column on the home page), and that will
have to do for now.

Nathan G
Posts: 127
Joined: Sat May 17, 2014 7:03 pm

Re: Future predictions repository

Post by Nathan G »

Approximately how many entries do you think would be on such a list? Just as an order of magnitude.

I understand that you are working on your own, but by the daily activity on this forum/weblog comments there are clearly a lot of people who are enthusiast about GD.

John
Posts: 11479
Joined: Sat Sep 20, 2008 12:10 pm
Location: Cambridge, MA USA
Contact:

Re: Future predictions repository

Post by John »

Nathan G wrote: > Approximately how many entries do you think would be on such a
> list? Just as an order of magnitude.

> I understand that you are working on your own, but by the daily
> activity on this forum/weblog comments there are clearly a lot of
> people who are enthusiast about GD.
I'm not sure what kind of information you're looking for. Chaos
Theory proves that it's predictions with any kind of specificity --
such as the day of a stock market crash or the winner of an election
-- cannot be predicted. And by that I don't mean that neither I nor
anyone else has been clever enough to figure out a prediction. What I
mean is that it's mathematically provable that such things cannot be
predicted.

So, for example, I can tell you that it will be cold next winter --
that's a long-term trend prediction which is backed up by history.
But I can't tell you what the coldest temperature will be next winter,
and I certainly can't tell you what the temperature will be in Boston
on December 28.

So applying this to the Mideast, I've been predicting since 2003 that
there will be a war between Jews and Arabs re-fighting the genocidal
1948 that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of
the state of Israel.

Since then, I've been able to add nuances to that prediction, but I
can't get any more specific about the scenario.

Let's take ISIS for example. I could not have predicted that ISIS
would have emerged. (The closest I could come was my early
predictions that that the flood of jihadists pouring into Syria from
around the world would go back to their home countries and commit
terrorist acts there.)

Today I can't tell you what will happen to ISIS. If I were to guess,
my guess would be that it will be subsumed into the Salafists and
jihadists in Saudi Arabia and the region, and become part of the
fighting force in their war against Iran. However, I can't be more
specific than that.

For example, suppose lighting strikes and kills Abu Omar al-Baghdadi
tomorrow. That would change the entire structure of ISIS which can't
be predicted (and which Chaos Theory says is mathematically impossible
to predict).

On the other hand, suppose lightning strikes and kills Bashar al-Assad
tomorrow. That would change the entire nature of the Syria war in a
way that can't be predicted.

That's why Chaos Theory says what it says. There are a million
individual events that could affect the scenario (like a butterfly
flapping its wings in China could affect whether we have a hurricane
next month). But those events cannot be enumerated, and even if they
could be, no computer could tell you what effects they will have. The
only thing that can't change is the overall trend prediction based on
generational flows (System Dynamics applied to generational flows).

So my updated prediction is this, as I've repeated many times:
Generational Dynamics predicts that the Mideast is headed for a major
regional war between Arabs and Jews, between Sunnis and Shias, and
between various ethnic groups. If I did a lot of work, I could
probably make it a tiny bit more specific than that (e.g., by naming
some of the ethnic groups), but basically that's all you're going to
get.

Incidentally, even these "vague" predictions are not accepted by
almost anyone. Certainly neither the Democrats nor Republicans
accept them. Nor do the journalists. Nor do the analysts. And most
people who even become aware of them hate me as the messenger as
much as the mythical Cassandra was hated or the biblical Jeremiah was
hated.

There's a consistency to this. If it were possible to make the
predictions less vague, then other people would be aware of this, and
the predictions would be considered "obvious." But the predictions I
make are only "obvious" after I make them since they always come true,
but before then they're the objects of contempt.

Finally, to answer your question more directly: If you're willing to
accept the prediction above as the best that can be done for the
Mideast, then with a lot of work I could come up with a similar
prediction for every country I've written about, and I usually include
such predictions when I write about each individual country. That
would end up being around 100-150 predictions, if that's the "order of
magnitude" you're looking for.

Nathan G
Posts: 127
Joined: Sat May 17, 2014 7:03 pm

Re: Future predictions repository

Post by Nathan G »

John wrote: So, for example, I can tell you that it will be cold next winter --
that's a long-term trend prediction which is backed up by history.
But I can't tell you what the coldest temperature will be next winter,
and I certainly can't tell you what the temperature will be in Boston
on December 28.

So applying this to the Mideast, I've been predicting since 2003 that
there will be a war between Jews and Arabs re-fighting the genocidal
1948 that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of
the state of Israel.

Since then, I've been able to add nuances to that prediction, but I
can't get any more specific about the scenario.
I understand that. You can only estimate the general scenarios based on past history and the present situation (although more than often it seems the financial topics section leaps into much more specific predictions, mostly from Aeden).
John wrote:Let's take ISIS for example. I could not have predicted that ISIS
would have emerged. (The closest I could come was my early
predictions that that the flood of jihadists pouring into Syria from
around the world would go back to their home countries and commit
terrorist acts there.)
Yeah, that flood of jihadists is what I would consider an individual prediction, which in this case came true in the form of ISIS. I think the margin of time is what makes the prediction important. It's easy to say that an event will eventually happen in a region, but the nature of GD predicts the scenario as happening within a particular decade. Because of chaos theory, you can't be more specific than a decade, but that is still very useful information. I can't say exactly which day will be the coldest, but I can say for certainty that it will be someday between November and February.

Further predictions can be made as the direct consequence of other future events. What happens in the Middle East after the current crisis can be predicted based on the consequence of previous crisis eras in the past. Just like how we can predict that summer will follow winter, followed by another winter, etc. Obviously these predictions can't be exact, and are less exact the further from the present day we look, but the likelihood of each scenario depends on the current circumstances.
John wrote:Today I can't tell you what will happen to ISIS. If I were to guess,
my guess would be that it will be subsumed into the Salafists and
jihadists in Saudi Arabia and the region, and become part of the
fighting force in their war against Iran. However, I can't be more
specific than that.
I wouldn't call it guessing, but we can estimate the fate of rebel movements in a region by comparing the situation with similar rebel movements in previous crisis eras. Then we can estimate what the next generation will do in the Middle East based on the successive generation of previous crisis eras, etc., with a growing margin of error over time. As you say, we can't pin down exactly what will happen to a specific organization like ISIS, but the general major movements in each region per generation is what is known.
John wrote:For example, suppose lighting strikes and kills Abu Omar al-Baghdadi
tomorrow. That would change the entire structure of ISIS which can't
be predicted (and which Chaos Theory says is mathematically impossible
to predict).

On the other hand, suppose lightning strikes and kills Bashar al-Assad
tomorrow. That would change the entire nature of the Syria war in a
way that can't be predicted.
I would consider that very far on the spectrum of probability. It is very rare, as far as I know, for leaders in past crises to be killed that way, and even when they occasionally do for other natural causes, the rebel movement itself is not affected (such as Matthias Maccabeas died and succeeded by Judas, or Richard of York was killed and succeeded by Edward IV). The possible scenarios may be virtually infinite, but some are much more likely than others based on previous history. The coldest day next year could very well be in late March, but generally speaking that's much less likely than the coldest day being in December or January.
John wrote:That's why Chaos Theory says what it says. There are a million
individual events that could affect the scenario (like a butterfly
flapping its wings in China could affect whether we have a hurricane
next month). But those events cannot be enumerated, and even if they
could be, no computer could tell you what effects they will have. The
only thing that can't change is the overall trend prediction based on
generational flows (System Dynamics applied to generational flows).
That's what I would assume. Yet Aeden and the others' discussions about minute changes in the stock market and the presidential election on a daily basis makes me think there's something else going on.
John wrote:So my updated prediction is this, as I've repeated many times:
Generational Dynamics predicts that the Mideast is headed for a major
regional war between Arabs and Jews, between Sunnis and Shias, and
between various ethnic groups. If I did a lot of work, I could
probably make it a tiny bit more specific than that (e.g., by naming
some of the ethnic groups), but basically that's all you're going to
get.
That's cool. I assume this will take place at the climax of the crisis era, which would be followed by the next austerity under the domination of whichever group wins (or some status quo in between).
John wrote:There's a consistency to this. If it were possible to make the
predictions less vague, then other people would be aware of this, and
the predictions would be considered "obvious." But the predictions I
make are only "obvious" after I make them since they always come true,
but before then they're the objects of contempt.
That's why I think its import to keep track of them.
John wrote:Finally, to answer your question more directly: If you're willing to
accept the prediction above as the best that can be done for the
Mideast, then with a lot of work I could come up with a similar
prediction for every country I've written about, and I usually include
such predictions when I write about each individual country. That
would end up being around 100-150 predictions, if that's the "order of
magnitude" you're looking for.
That and I assume you've made more than one prediction in some nations (particularly the United States, which is the site's focus).

John
Posts: 11479
Joined: Sat Sep 20, 2008 12:10 pm
Location: Cambridge, MA USA
Contact:

Re: Future predictions repository

Post by John »

When you talk about highly specific predictions, then you have to talk
about probabilities.

I always like to joke that it's easy to get one million predictions
right -- just make two million predictions.

I've had a pretty good record of making predictions that have turned
out to be true, since I'm really pretty conservative in picking
predictions that history shows are almost certain to come true.
Generational Dynamics applies MIT's System Dynamics to the flow of
generations to determine trends that must almost certainly occur, and
therefore can be predicted, and uses Chaos Theory to determine which
policies can change at any time, and so cannot be predicted.

So when I said "you can't predict the results of an election," that's
obviously not true because people predict the results of an election
all the time, usually based on poll results. But unless the poll
overwhelmingly favors one side, these specific predictions are often
wrong, perhaps almost 50% of the time. I should have said, "You can't
predict the results of an election, and expect that the prediction
will almost certainly come true."

There's a concept in abstract Set Theory that I always think about: If
you pick a number at random between 0 and 1, then the probability that
it will be a rational number (1/2, 1/3, etc.) is zero.

Consider the (abstract) set of all (abstract) points on the line
segment from 0 to 1. So the set contains numbers like 0.5, 1/3, 1/pi,
and sqrt(2)-1. From Measure Theory, the measure of the entire set is
1. Suppose you select a point from that set. What's the probability
that the point you select will be a rational number (like 1/2, 1/3,
etc.)? The answer is zero. That's because the measure of the set of
irrational numbers is 1, while the measure of the set of rational
numbers is 0.

The mathematical terms that are used are "almost impossible" and
"almost certain" to refer to events whose probability is 0 or 1,
respectively. And those are the concepts that I think about when I
make a Generational Dynamics prediction.

When I write that something is "mathematically certain," I'm actually
using that phrase so as not to confuse the reader. I should use the
mathematical phrase "almost certain," since any prediction could fail
under some circumstances, such as if the sun explodes. So when I
write "mathematically certain," I'm thinking of the mathematical term
"almost certain."

So your point about it being unlikely that al-Assad would die from a
lightning strike is true, and one could say that such an event is
"almost impossible." But I was using lighting strike as a proxy for
any of a number of other ways he could die -- assassination, palace
coup, airstrike, bad case of the flu, etc. -- and these events are
definitely not "almost impossible."

So if you're going to venture into the world of "specific
predictions," then you have to think about what the probability is of
these predictions coming true, since specific predictions are rarely
"almost certain."

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