The record nobody's keeping: Prediction is where bullshit goes to die

"You know, Quasimodo predicted all this." – Bobby Baccalieri, The Sopranos.

A middle-aged man stands in a dimly lit living room. Around him are about two dozen other people. Some exchange darting looks and quiet murmurs. Others stare at the ceiling or the walls, their breathing rapid and shallow. They're all here to be part of the most important thing that has ever happened in human history.

Soon an apocalyptic flood will tear through the land, destroying most of the planet. But hope is not lost: a flying saucer will arrive to sweep the faithful, gathered in that room, away to safety.

He opens the curtain and looks out at the empty night sky.

A few months ago, anyone who knew him would have found this preposterous. But a spiritualist named Marian Keech, who's also in the room with him, had convinced him. She predicted that on this night, December 21st, 1954, an apocalyptic flood would destroy most of the planet, but the faithful would be saved.

The clock reads 11:58pm. He looks at Marian and at the devoted followers. Most have their eyes closed. Soon, everything would be changed, changed utterly.

11:59pm. All he can hear is his own pulse.

Earlier that week, he had cleared his desk. He had been a doctor at Michigan State for fourteen years. He had taken out every cent from his bank account, given away his record player, his dining table, his armchair, his lawnmower, everything he owned. He'd left the keys to his house on the kitchen counter. In outer space, possessions and money would be worthless.

The clock strikes midnight. A wave of sickly dread lurches over him. He closes his eyes. Any second now. Any second.

Behind his eyelids, only the familiar gray static. Then another heartbeat. And another.

He opens his eyes. A few people in the room are also looking around. Some of them catch each other's eyes. A few manage a thin, brief smile.

By 2:00 am, nobody is smiling.

At 4:45 am, Marian rises from her chair. "I've received a message," she says. “Rejoice, everyone! The world has been spared!” She continues, “Mighty is the word of God and by His word have ye been saved. For from the mouth of death have ye been delivered. Not since the beginning of time upon this Earth has there been such a force of Good and light as now floods this room.”

People are crying. Laughing. Hugging each other.

At sunrise, the doctor is standing on a street corner accosting strangers to tell them that faith had saved the planet.

∼

Everyone loves a good theory, right up until the theory has to predict something.

Have you ever wondered, in the quieter moments, if your most cherished and deeply-held beliefs about the world are mostly just cherry-picked self-serving bullshit? Me neither.

But if you want an honest answer to that question, there is a reliable way to find out: look at the accuracy of your predictions, not at the strength of your convictions.

One clear pattern has emerged from decades of research on predictions: the people who are worst at predicting are those who hold tight to “big idea” frameworks. That is, the committed left-wingers, right-wingers, grand optimists and pessimists. These people force every idea they hear through the mangle of a pre-packaged theory they already hold.

Why are these people the worst at predicting? Because they glom onto a simplified theory that unburdens them of the hard work of thinking.

The problem with most theorising about human behaviour is that it's post-hoc. Someone observes something, tries to explain it, and presents the explanation with the confidence of someone who knows nobody will keep score.

The question that matters is: what did the theory predict before the observation? Was the prediction correct? This is the central test of whether an idea is tracking reality or just rationalising after the fact.

Like Marian’s “theory” about the flood and flying saucer, any sufficiently vague and malleable theory can stretch over reality, like an enormous wet chewing gum, to absorb every contradiction and failed prediction without snapping. The more “flexible” the theory, the more bullshit it contains, no exceptions.

The physicist David Deutsch at the University of Oxford points out that all bad theories share a common trait: they are conveniently adjustable. They don't make specific predictions. They shapeshift and absorb failed predictions and contradictions endlessly ("rejoice, the world has been spared!").

Good theories are different. They are constrained and specific. They commit you to a prediction about reality. If reality pushes against them hard enough, they snap, and they cannot be adjusted when the outcome is known. If the theory makes a prediction that fails, the rational response is to reject the theory and update it with a new theory, not to use sneaky wordsmithing and mental gymnastics to explain why the failure was consistent with it after all.

Now, you might object that this is fine for physics, but human behaviour is too messy, complex, and unpredictable to hold to this standard. This sounds reasonable but it’s wrong. People are not billiard balls or Newtonian physics in fleshy form, but they are not random behaviour generators either. Human nature is predictable enough that social life is possible at all. Without predictability, laws could not deter, punishment could not change behaviour, friendships and relationships could not survive.

Every ideology is a theory of human nature, even if you don't think of it like this. Your theory of human nature can be tested (albeit imperfectly). The question is whether you are willing to test it.

The online environment has created enormous demand for after-the-fact explanation and almost no demand for genuine prediction. The standard format of debate is: something happens, both sides explain why their worldview predicted it all along, nobody asks whether either worldview actually made that prediction in advance, and the cycle repeats.

Think about the last time you saw people squabbling online about something that would eventually be verified. An argument in a group chat. A take on a news story. A prediction about a boxing match. A confident call about what was going to happen next. Someone in that argument was probably completely confident, and completely wrong. Now ask yourself: is there any record of it that lasts? Did being right mean anything? Did being wrong cost anything? Probably not.

You can be wrong a hundred times and walk into the next argument carrying the same unearned confidence. No trace remains (rejoice, your theory has been spared). Nobody's keeping score. Opinions are “free”. Failed predictions fade into the mists of time. That makes every confident opinion untested by reality, including your own, worth nothing.

Real skin in the game means that if someone's theory is incorrect they bear a cost, a dent in their status and credibility. And if their theory is correct they get a reward, a boost in status and credibility. The cost makes the prediction meaningful. It makes the person making the prediction think carefully before claiming certainty they do not have. And it makes the record of their predictions a real measure of how well their model of the world maps to reality.

The question that strips the bullshit out of your theories is: what does your theory predict will happen that could be verified? If the answer is nothing specific, the theory is probably not tracking reality (and, if you're honest with yourself, it's probably a pet theory that you secretly don't want tested because you fear it won't survive contact with reality).

Figuring out what is true is very hard, to put it mildly. Telling stories and spouting half-baked opinions is very easy. On top of that, far too many public opinions are performative signals of tribal allegiance, not nuanced truth-seeking exercises. So it’s little wonder that online discourse is such a mess. It's filled with enough idiotic and performative bullshit to fertilise the planet many times over.

The sane response to this messiness is to avoid letting grand ideological frameworks blind you to reality. Instead, think for yourself, assess things case by case, and hold your views with the strength of conviction that the evidence warrants. Think about what predictions or evidence would change your beliefs, rather than holding onto self-serving stories that can never be tested.

Marian Keech made a specific prediction, that a flood would destroy the planet and the faithful would be saved. It failed, and she walked away (along with most of her followers) still a true believer, because her theory had no grip on reality. She paid no real price for being wrong.

On Hoozright, prediction is built into the heart of what we do. A vote is a claim about the outcome. It’s an on-record prediction, made before the debate is resolved, rather than yet another opinion on the internet. When the crowd reaches its verdict on a debate, the prediction is either confirmed or refuted. That is what skin in the game looks like.