Every year many self appointed prophets tell the world this and that will happen: death of x, earthquake there, volcano here, and so on. It's clear there must be a couple of them who are right and supposely have "divination powers" of some sort, so, lets make a database with all of them, so the "best" are "fully accredited doomsayers" and the rest burnt or drowned. In any case, the sideeffect will be the reduction and probable future elimination of this area of superstition (or else the identification of the real thing).-- nobrakes, May 30 2003 this old girl was always rather appealing http://www.crystalinks.com/shipton.html [po, Oct 17 2004] The End of the World http://anomalyinfo....icles/ga00009.shtmlThis person has compiled a fairly workable list of "end of the world" predictions. [Aristotle, Oct 17 2004] dag http://magma.nation.../ngm/0205/feature6/rong... [po, Oct 17 2004] Amazing Prophecies In Moby Dick http://cs.anu.edu.a...m/dilugim/moby.html(This is actually an effort at debunking those who specialize in finding predictions of past events.) [DrCurry, Oct 17 2004] I nominate [egbert] the mule whisperer.-- bristolz, May 30 2003 2nded. he's real spooky that one.-- po, May 30 2003 Actually, most accredited prophets (the Bible Code people, the followers of Nostradamus, Steve de Groof, etc.) claim their prophecies only after the event.-- DrCurry, May 30 2003 Arthur C Clarke is pretty decent at this. Wait till we put a probe down on (in?) Europa and it gets eaten.-- Zimmy, May 30 2003 // It's clear there must be a couple of them who are right //
It is? How?
The folks behind the Book of Lists tried to do something like this with a book they put out in the early 80s called The Book of Predictions. I wish I still had my copy of it.
Anyway, they handicapped a group of of 'predictors', divided into two groups, the experts and the seers. Among the seers, Jeanne Dixon got the highest accuracy rankings, mostly because she got a couple of good scores in with her Kennedy prognostications.
Howver, the margin of accuracy was still way below what you'd want to see for any sort of reliable system. In other words, the book basically proved they're all full of hooey.-- waugsqueke, May 30 2003 Are you suggesting that vulcanologists would be ground to a pulp if they get their vulcano predictions and/or warnings wrong? That's a pretty tough interpretation of the peer review principle.-- Aristotle, May 30 2003 I'd tell you where to get some but I cannot ignore the hardware store paradox, for what its worth I really do like the The half bakery, [rapid transit] and all. I prommised Jutta that I wouldent do this, sorry guys.-- supercheezynachos, May 30 2003 [waugs] was right I was drunk,-- supercheezynachos, May 30 2003 And you are again, huh? You should know better, nachos. Someone get his keys.-- waugsqueke, May 30 2003 thank's man.-- supercheezynachos, May 30 2003 [dag] Check out my anno on 'Blatantly Idiotic Halfbakery Predictions 2003'.-- galukalock, May 30 2003 I've always felt that Nostradamus was highly overrated... let's scrutinize his works and discredit him heartily! +-- X2Entendre, May 30 2003 One way to deal with false prophets is to kill them if they err. I understand that was SOP in OT times.-- hyphenator, Nov 24 2003 [hyphenator] - I think [nobrakes] has this covered when (s)he recommended we //Grind the false ones and pour water on them// and went on to suggest //the rest burnt or drowned//.-- dobtabulous, Nov 24 2003 random, halfbakery