A Rant On Failed Predictions Post From 2007

"If you could be the age you are now, but in another decade, what decade would it be?" 

 

Interesting question. Maybe the later part of this century, as I would love to be around for the year 2099. If only to see if all the dire predictions come true. I'm fascinated by predictions - I have a number of books from the seventies that predicted calamity upon calamity for the human race by the year 1999. None of them came remotely close to occuring.

 

I've never seen any of the predictors held accountable for being wrong. My favorite off-the-mark predictor is Paul Ehrlich, he of The Population Bomb. In 1972 he said that Americans born since 1946 would have a life expectancy of 49 years, due to smog and DDT, that hepatitis and epidemic dysentery rates would go up 500%, and that a permanent drought would hit the Midwest, turning it into a desert. In 1975 he said that most ocean fishes would be extinct due to pollution. In 1977 he stated that annual fish yield per capita would be less than 1/2 that in 1967 (annual fish yield per capita as recently as 2004 is a little higher than 1967 due to increases in Aquaculture/Fishfarming technologies), and that fifty million people a year will starve.

 

He was (and is) so far off the mark he couldn't get a job with Channel 9 weather, yet he still is regarded as an expert on population and ecology.

 

I get a special kick out of the general, or broad category predictors. These are people such as economist Herman Kahn, who stated in 1974 that by 1985 "...over 70 problems of various kinds may cause a technological crisis."

 

Can a person employed to build a statistical model that would indicate where tax dollars should be spent to prepare the government for adequate responses in times of crisis be more vague?

 

Yeah, it's an odd interest, but it keeps me laughing. Back to the question.

 

I would love to be in my forties at the turn of the next century. I love this point in my life - everything still works okay, I have learned how to manage my resources, and I have enough. If I could have the same circumstances about 90 years from now, when we're all jetting around in flying cars and eating lunch made from phytoplanktons, I think it would be grand.

 

I have no desire to go back in time though, as I can get all of the past I want from books and movies. There are certain interesting characters from the past I would have loved to have known, but heck, there are certain interesting characters alive today that I would love to know, but I have to satisfy my curiosty like everyone else, by reading about them or watching them being interviewed on the tube.

 

5 Little Things That Mean So Much:

 

1) Not wearing shoes.

2) My coffee cup that is the size of a funeral urn.

3) Mo, the fat cat.

4) Indoor plumbing

5) The first moments awake after a great dream when you still think it was real.