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Comment by serial_dev | Hacker News Reader

The best predictor of future events is past experience.

Every US president in history has left office peacefully, the most probable outcome is that future presidents will too.

Similarly, some people always think that the current president will crown himself a king and the Other Party will never ever be able to get into power. And these people have been so far always wrong.

I’m not saying it can’t happen this time, but in my opinion, it is unlikely.

The real skeptical in me says it doesn’t even matter, no matter who you vote for, you’ll get John McCain.

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> The best predictor of future events is past experience.

I have never died before, not once in my life. The most likely outcome is that I will live forever.

> I have never died before, not once in my life. The most likely outcome is that I will live forever.

They didn't say that this is always true for every situation forever. They said "The best predictor of future events is past experience".

Keyword is "best".

You being alive today is the best predictor of you being alive tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year.

Okay, so "me being alive today is the best predictor of me being alive in 150 years".

Nope. Everyone who is alive 150 years ago is dead. So the best predictor of being dead 150 years from now is to be alive currently (or already dead).

That's the point: you can "prove" anything by saying "the best predictor of future events is past experience" and then pointing to the obvious wrong past experience from which to extrapolate.

I'm unsure where you thought we were talking about "proving" anything with these statements? Forming illogical counter-examples doesn't show that the original premise was false, just that one can form clearly wrong examples of this.

No one has ever lived 150 years. Therefore there is nothing that can be predictive of living 150 years. One is starting with something that is known to be incorrect and then working backwards to phrase it in a similar way.

Trump has also never left office peacefully, so there is nothing that can be predictive of him doing so.

> You being alive today is the best predictor of you being alive tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year.

An unprecedented glioblastoma diagnosis would predict otherwise. When the facts in evidence become extraordinary, one must adapt the adage accordingly.

What do you do when the model you know to be best ("past experience") consistently fails to predict anything after an agent of chaos is introduced to the mix? Do you still stand by it? Can you really say past experience consistently predicted the events of this year alone?

If you're in the middle of a nuclear winter do you still insist summer is just a few months away based on past experience? And if you hear someone saying it will you believe it's anything other than disingenuous or ignorant?

> The best predictor of future events is past experience.

In the absence of any other data, sure. But we have lots of other data here. The first being that he didn't leave peacefully last time.

I'm not sure how you can say every President left office peacefully when four of them left by way of being assassinated, but I do see that's not quite the point you're trying to make. I'm not sure why we'd be so narrow as to only examine US history, rather than history at large unless we're operating under some guise of American Exceptionalism.

Nixon? Very technically left office peacefully but he would have been impeached and removed had he not. Strange to note that his crimes would hardly warrant mention in the context of the current occupant of the oval office.

That's a very... pre-1748 kind of philosophy. Hume, Keynes, Russell, Popper and others have written at length about the limitations of prediction from past experience. You can read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction

Even if we accept that extrapolation is the best you can do, you'd still need to justify why the domain of "past experience" is exactly wide enough to generalise across current and previous US presidencies, but not so wide as to include even one of the numerous populist strongman takeovers in non-US political history. Proof by American Exceptionalism, perhaps?

> The best predictor of future events is past experience

Except for the most impactful things.

This is why black swan events can be so devastating.

I saw another comment here about a month ago that said many people tend to round a very small risk down to zero risk. The comments were related to driving and the risk of serious injury or death that most people discount, but I think it also applies to other areas of risk in life, too, for many people.

Exceptional events are low probability by definition, and thus people tend to ignore the possibility, assuming instead that the status quo will continue to exist.

> Every US president in history has left office peacefully, the most probable outcome is that future presidents will too.

That is false. On January 6th 2021 the sitting president fomented a mob to violently keep him in power.

If we’re going off your rule of past events being the best prediction for future events then we should all be shitting ourselves over the fact that this guy isn’t leaving peacefully

> The best predictor of future events is past experience.

> Every US president in history has left office peacefully

Considering the current US President tried to have his VP and Congress killed by an angry mob if they didn't hand over a second presidential term to him, we should expect the same this time, but better organized and with ~8 years of planning.

> Every US president in history has left office peacefully, the most probable outcome is that future presidents will too.

I think you are forgetting a date that happened on the 6th day after the start of 2021. I would most certainly not call that pieceful in any way shape or form (and yes, I count that as part of leaving office, being the certification of the next president). By your logic this would mean that it is unlikely that he will peacefully leave office.

>> Every US president in history has left office peacefully,

The events of January 6th 2021 suggest otherwise.

> Every US president in history has left office peacefully,

Every president except the currently sitting one. Yes, past behaviour is often a good predictor for future behaviour.

> Similarly, some people always think that the current president will crown himself a king and the Other Party will never ever be able to get into power.

As far as I know, this is the first time a president has completely disregarded civility, declared marshall law under false pretenses (not false alarm, specifically false pretenses), talked about crowning himself king, and various forms of rigging future elections.

So the fact that some people (allegedly) thought Clinton/Bush/Obama/Biden would crown themselves is pretty irrelevant.

>> The best predictor of future events is past experience.

That's why you're currently reading HN with Internet Explorer on your IBM desktop running OS/2 2025.

The adage about history as an indicator only applies to the steady state. It compeltely breaks down when with events that are so rare as to be unpredictable when they have extreme - good or bad - consequences.

ex:

"The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology."

And I would argue the world today isn't even close to the edge of the spectrum when it comes to lack of predictability or how extreme the outcomes may be.

> Every US president in history has left office peacefully,

That's not how I would describe Jan 6 2021 not to mention Trump's other efforts to subvert the election results, and refusal to accept the results to this day.

> some people always think that the current president will crown himself a king and the Other Party will never ever be able to get into power.

Really? When has there been such a public outcry before? There have never been "No Kings" protests before, because they weren't needed. Even if you hated Reagan, Clinton or Obama, you knew he wasn't going to try to run for a third term, whereas Trump keeps publicly saying he might.

Your comment appears to ignore reality.

> Every US president in history has left office peacefully

I guess you consider the J6 riot/insurrection "peaceful"? You're probably in a minority if you think that way.

> Every US president in history has left office peacefully, the most probable outcome is that future presidents will too.

Trump did not leave office peacefully last time. The most probable outcome is that he will not leave office peacefully next time.

Not when you take into account how Trump has behaved in his second term and that there's an authoritarian playbook he's following that has worked in other contemporary countries like Hungary. What other president has refused to acknowledged they lost an election, and refused to acknowledge that they're not permitted a third term by the Constitution? There are former Trump officials from his first term who warned about his reelection.

What's going to doom US democracy is all the people in denial that an authoritarian coup could and is happening in America.

> Every US president in history has left office peacefully

Have they memory-holed "Jan 6, 2021" from your history books?

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