Here’s one reason that prediction matters, based on an Oxfam report published yesterday: “Rising food prices are tightening the squeeze on populations already struggling to buy adequate food, demanding radical reform of the global food system, Oxfam has warned.” As we deal with prediction in a TOK class, we want to confront the doomsday cults and prophetic dreams to which I gave the last couple of postings, and all bogus foretelling. At the same time, though, we also want to treat the general patterns and trends of the present established by sound methods which can give a justified basis for projection into the future.
Fortunately, not all of those predictions necessarily come about. Fortunately, human beings have the capability of changing their behaviour in response to predictions. I’ve sometimes seen this human response to prediction noted as a problem — a problem undermining the certainty of our knowledge of the future. And, yes, it is that. However, I find the lack of certainty of the future sometimes to be the whole point of making a prediction, while there is still hope of responding to a grim forecast and taking action to prevent it. We do not want the prediction to be proved true. Oxfam’s chief executive, Barbara Stocking, puts it very well: ”we are sleepwalking toward an avoidable age of crisis”. Avoidable.
