Not A Blog™

How long has it been? Ah yes, one year. It’s a bit strange, returning to this after so long. It is, somewhat paradoxically, both new and trepidatious yet old and familiar. Where to pick up the thread? The best way to ease back into this is to write a response to my first post of 2008, What Will Happen. It was my attempt at simultaneously predicting and gaming the future. As I wrote, by declaring that something definitively will or will not happen, I like to think I can make the opposite occur. Let’s take a look.

1. Ron Paul will not be a contender. At all.

This turned out to be true, although not necessarily because people didn’t support him. He had a very vocal and strong group of supporters. It was just a really, really small group. It wouldn’t have been enough for him to get anywhere in the primaries, but it turned out not to matter because, shortly after I posted this prediction, he voluntarily withdrew from the race. I can’t say that I blame him. He continues to represent Texas in the House, but is unlikely to be effective with much legislation as he espouses a version of Republicanism that even Republicans no longer follow.

2a. We’ll have about the same number of troops in Iraq

Depends how you define “about the same”, but I’m going to call it true. The surge put 170,000 troops in Iraq, but this was reduced to about 140,000 by July. I haven’t looked up more recent statistics (if they’re even available; I’m not sure), but I’m fairly certain it’s still around 140,000. Insomuch as the Bush administration promised we would have “only” 50,000 after the initial invasion in 2003, I think we can say that 140,000 is close enough to 170,000 and far enough away from the promise of 50,000 to say we still have “about the same” number there.

2b. Americans’ aggravation will rise to new heights but they won’t actually do anything

Gotta call it false. Americans did at least one thing: they voted. More importantly, they voted for the guy most likely to reverse the current course, which is exactly what he recently announced he would do. Obama outlined his plan to reduce the number of troops in Iraq to the original 50,000 projection by August 2010. In order for me to call this true, I think America would have had to elect John McCain and have him continue staying the course, with 100,000+ personnel figures we’ve had in Iraq for a year now.

2c. I will be in Iraq or Afghanistan

Well, nope. It’s weird how that worked out.

3. The TSA will find a way to become even more ludicrous and pathetic
We haven’t heard much new insanity coming from the TSA lately. Arguably, things have been improving, what with their official blog (laughable as it often is) and the legislation in congress to make it easier for people to petition for removal from the no-fly list. However, the TSA continues to be an impediment to security rather than an enhancement (to see why this is true, read pretty much anything about the TSA by Bruce Schneier), and stories continue to abound on the interwebs of regulation trumping common sense. Things certainly haven’t gotten better. However, since I can’t think of any specific examples of them being blatantly more ludicrous and pathetic compared to a year ago, I’m going to have to call this one false.

4. Consumer technology will continue to advance incrementally

I’m really glad I put this one in. It’s pretty much a no-brainer. Yes, consumer tech advanced incrementally. To be honest, I’m not sure what sort of monumental breakthrough would need to occur for this to be rendered false. Regardless of what it would take, I can’t recall anything from this past year that would even aspire to that level of new-ness. Most things are incremental advancements and recombinations of existing technologies. Nevertheless, I like to think this will be rendered false one of these years.

5. Even though I don’t know enough about popular culture to make any predictions worth anything, I’m going to anyway

In order of the original presentation: Knight Rider sucked (true), the writer’s strike resolved itself without any government intervention (false—I said the government would step in. I was joking, of course, but it would have been hilarious if they did), and the RIAA continued to sue people and sell less CDs (true).

Counting up the totals, we see that, out of nine individual predictions, I called five correctly and four incorrectly. I think this says a few things: 1. If I make very broad predictions, they come true, 2. Simply calling something as true doesn’t make the opposite happen (at least not as often as I’d like)—and when it does happen it can do so with dire, unexpected consequences, such as broken legs. 3. I’m not statistically better than chance, plus this sample size is much too small. But I think all this really means one thing above all others: I need to keep doing this predicting the future bit until I establish myself a track record. Hopefully confirmation bias will cause everyone to remember the hits and forget the misses, and I’ll be sitting pretty.

-Ted

« Previous Page — Next Page »