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Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

If anyone could actually predict that... the would keep it to themselves and make a fortune. Of course, no one really can, so we get lots of hand waving, theories and speculation, some of which are more reasoned and intelligent than others. We also get lots of people trying to Prove a Point about their particular political/economic views.

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Forget predicting the future, there is plenty of data on the present. Here are some nice graphs:

http://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/studies/re...

Thanks for the v. useful link (and like your website :)

Most disasters can be predicted at some point before they strike, by at least some subset of observers.

Your comment implies that in the case of a disastrous implosion of the global economy, the window of predictability would be so narrow that there would be no point in trying to anticipate it; and that while we wait to see what's going to happen, there's no use listening to the ongoing chatter of "hand waving, theories and speculation".

But is that really true?

I think it behooves us to keep evaluating information as it streams in. (Attempting to discount the speculators and "people trying to Prove a Point, as always.)

"Most disasters can be predicted at some point before they strike, by at least some subset of observers."

The lucky ones?

The ones lucky enough to interpret their data stream correctly.

Sure. But saying that some people can predict something, does not mean that it is 'predictable'.

I think what you're getting at is that there's a distinction between predicting well, vs. just guessing, and having your guess turn out to be correct.

This is true. In the case of repeatable events, over time, the former will do better than chance and the latter will do as well as chance.

I'm talking about the former, not the latter.

You should read "The Black Swan" - the book has flaws, but he does make a convincing case for people being simply unable to predict certain things. They make up stories afterwards, but those stories aren't able to predict the next big, unexpected thing.

Ugh, I can see my writing has been very unclear in this thread.

Anyway thanks for the recommendation.

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