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Except that while, say, predicting new advances in agriculture would sound delusional to Malthus in the late 1700s, thus avoiding the massive famines he predict
by jhbadger 5y ago
Except that while, say, predicting new advances in agriculture would sound delusional to Malthus in the late 1700s, thus avoiding the massive famines he predicted in the Western world, that's exactly what happened. He would have been right had nothing changed. But things do. The same thing with Ehrlich's "Population Bomb" in the 1960s. He didn't predict that in many Western nations (and even China) that the number of children would soon go the other way -- below the number needed for replacement, leading to a smaller, older population. Which causes problems of its own of course. but based on history one that is unlikely to be insolvable. So ultimately it's the pessimists that are delusional because they don't see that pessimism has rarely been right.
- popcube 5y agosame prediction used to against global warming, they trust just waiting for new technology... but so many people fighting for preventing these crisis happening, and rich can say this is not true/new technology will work and get their money
- lazide 5y agoIt is important to recognize that sounding delusional and BEING delusional are vastly different things. The fundamental nature of someone having delusions is they believe things which are not true, and when faced when evidence of what is actually true, they refuse to believe it. Like a rock not physically being where that rock is, or that 2+2=5, or their favorite politician loves them. Fundamentally, any evaluation of a prediction has to be projecting the current world views onto something fundamentally unpredictable, the future. Any high variance future prediction will sound delusional. Since high variance also means high spread among possible futures, of which only one is actually possible, that also means high odds of a bad prediction. But someone making, evaluating, or the predictions themselves aren’t delusional yet, because there is no fact yet to compare them against.