Can predictions create their own reality?

The owner of a chain of toy shops has warned the Observer that demand for popular toys may outstrip supply this year. Thus parents who leave important purchases until shortly before Christmas may experience frustration and/or higher prices.

While there may be valid reasons why this year may be more difficult than usual, thus justifying the coverage that this warning has been granted in many other news channels, both in the UK and the USA, it is also worth noting that the sources quoted by the Observer (described as "seasoned figures in the toy industry") are not exactly disinterested observers, and clearly stand to benefit from the early purchasing behaviour that this warning is intended to stimulate.

The point I want to make here is that warnings of shortages can often result in the very shortages they are warning about, and this effect may not always be unintended.

But we have also seen the opposite effect. When "seasoned figures" announce that supply is robust and there is no danger of shortages, people often buy extra anyway, just in case the announcement is false. The paradox here is that under certain conditions two opposite statements may produce the same outcome. I mentioned this paradox in a talk I gave at a philosophy seminar over thirty years ago.

 

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Louis Ashworth, Parents told to buy Christmas toys early to beat shortages (Telegraph 29 July 2021)

Michael Savage, Toys could be in short supply this Christmas, so get buying now, industry warns (Observer via Guardian website, 15 August 2021)

Joan Verdon, Shipping Container Crisis Could Derail Holiday Toy Sales (Forbes, 3 August 2021)

Richard Veryard, Speculation and Information: The Epistemology of Stock Market Fluctuations (Invited presentation, King's College London, 16 November 1988). Warning - the theory needs a complete overhaul, but the examples are interesting.

Related posts: Trolls are like ghosts (December 2020), On the performativity of data (August 2021)

The Power of Prediction

@andrewbolt gently mocks the apocalyptic predictions of elderly professors, as well as the way popular journalists can get sensational headlines from an interview that is largely composed of casual chatter. Our own extinction is forecast, but he's going by dead reckoning (Herald Sun, 19th June 2010).

Why do we treat the end of the world as a kind of entertainment? Andrew Bolt suggests that "when these scientists say the end of the world is nigh, they don't mean it, not literally, but are just scaring us for our own good. Or that they do mean it, but are frankly batty."

Batty or merely hopelessly unqualified? Frank Fenner, who recently predicted that the human race will be extinct within the next 100 years, is an emeritus professor of microbiology. Meanwhile, Nicholas Boyle, who has predicted a dramatic event to take place in 2014 and determine the course of the 21st century, is a professor of German literature. What qualifies these specialists to become general-purpose futurologists?

For the popular press, of course, one professor is as good as another.

• Human race 'will be extinct within 100 years', claims leading scientist (Daily Mail)
• 2014 will determine course of century, says Cambridge professor (Daily Telegraph)
• Why the world will NOT end in 2012: Nasa scientist debunks conspiracy theories (Daily Mail)
• Dementia may have been caused by the Second World War, says scientist (Daily Mail)

Is Change Possible?

November 2008

Predictions about the likely outcome of the US election. And once Obama looks like he's won, predictions about the likely direction of the Obama administration.

"The fact is that all of the dire predictions each side has made about the other can only partially come true because the genius of our system is that nothing stupid can happen very quickly."  Fred Weinberg, Whoever wins gets Herblock's Clean Shave (Penny Press Las Vegas, Vol 6 No 6, 30 October 2008)

"Obama may turn out to be less red in the practice of his presidency than his words and aspirations would imply." Robert Peston, Obama shackled by Debt (BBC News, 5 November 2008)

 

"The Democrats will owe their widened mandate to the success of some centrist and conservative Democrats elected in formerly red states and districts, and Obama and his Congressional partners will have to bring them along, too. The challenge, of course, is not letting those people drive the agenda, strangle the opportunities for change, and alienate the energized base that elected Obama, and created this momentum for a really different politics. We can't let the Village take over again." Joan Walsh, Election Day Blogging (Salon, 4 November 2008)

"The political Establishment of both parties is ideologically loyal to conservative corporatism. Indeed, that is the power of money -- the power of the hostile takeover, if you will. And that means the uprising that this election season has stoked will need to become all the more intense starting tomorrow if we are to make sure a (hopefully) President-elect Obama doesn't spend the first days after the election constructing another conservative Presidency -- only this time, building it with bricks and mortar marked 'progressive'." David Sirota, Election Day Blogging (Salon, 4 November 2008)