Introduction

Telling the future is not always an appropriate form of behaviour. There are two separate sets of circumstances which may make it unrewarding. The first is when our predictions are wrong:

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children’s games from the beginning … one of the games to which it is most attached is called … ‘Cheat the Prophet’. [The prophets] took something or other that was certainly going on in their time, and then said it would go on more and more until something extraordinary happened. And very often they added that in some odd place that extraordinary thing had happened and that it shows the signs of the times…. The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. (G. K. Chesterton,

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

2

)

Clearly, if all our forecasts are disproved, for whatever reason, there is very little point in making them.