> From: Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > From: "David Brin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > > > > Holy incestuous Feedback Batman! > > > > > > It'll never work. Heisenberg had it right. > > > > > > SO you are saying that nobody is right more often than > > other people? > > > > Or that some people do not deserve more credibility > > than others, for being right more often? Hm. Unique. > > > The final factor that I wish to consider is what I'd call the "astrology" > factor. If you look at general predictions of astrology for most people, > there will almost always be a manner in which the predictions were right. > The reason for this is not due to a real power of the planets over our > lives, of course, but the real power of people to match vague predictions > to what actually happened and thus see the predictions validated. In the > case of Feynman and Greenspan, there were hard numbers that their > predictions can be matched against. I believe that aspects of science > fiction novels that are later matched to reality can suffer from the same > "20-20 hindsight" problem. The parts of the prediction that match are > focused upon, and the differences are minimized. Thus, the predictions > seem more accurate than they really were.
AKA Subjective Validation, Confirmation Bias, and the Forer Effect: <<http://skepdic.com/forer.html>> <<http://skepdic.com/confirmbias.html>> <<http://skepdic.com/subjectivevalidation.html>> And of course the for lack of better term the "nodding" effect: <<http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/001505.html>> _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
