The Prediction Experiment: Part I – The Broad Outline

Original Post Date: 2007-03-21 Time: 00:00:00  Posted By: Jan

[I have been promising this for a long time, and finally, on the anniversary of Sharpeville, I have a day off from work and can get to write about this.

I’m going to do this in a manner similar to how I tackled the Hollow Earth idea more than 10 years ago, which resulted in my 600 page book called, “Hollow Planets”. It is a case of thinking outside the box and looking at the bizarre using logic.

I’ve always been open-minded and I’ve always had an inclination towards Spiritual/Religious/Occult things on the one hand, versus Science/Logic on the other.

Growing up in the violent war that was in Rhodesia I was quite different then. I felt very overwhelmed by what was happening when I was young and I wanted to know what “the meaning of life was”. What was its purpose? I became interested in the occult, especially in Life After Death and prophecy. Later I flip-flopped between religious extremism and athiesm. I hated athiesm. I was only a true athiest for one year.

Underneath all my viciousness lies a desire to understand life and my place in it as well as a desire to understand questions like, “Why are we here”.

Its almost ridiculous if you think about it, that here we are, on a functioning and well-populated planet, with an incredible variety of life and eco-systems. Everything is complex, amazing and it works beautifully… This planet is an amazing place and yet, we don’t know HOW WE GOT HERE! We don’t understand why we appear to be alone in the universe. We’ve never truly met someone from another world or dimension or parallel universe whom we can sit with to ask them burning questions like: “Why are we here?”, “Do you have proof that God exists?”, “Do you have proof of Life After Death?”, etc.

It is as if we are marooned on an island with no contact with the outside world. We have to invent/find the answers ourselves. We have nobody to rely on but – ourselves! Nobody can tell us we are right or wrong. We live and die knowing some things, but guessing many things while knowing that there are many questions we can barely even guess answers to.

There are people who claim they have spoken to God, or that God talks to them, and others who claim they have spoken to Aliens or have been visited by ghosts. We get people who claim to have certain knowledge of the past or future. There are a lot of claims…

When I was younger, prophecy fascinated me. It fascinated me tremendously in Rhodesia because the future was so uncertain. And it remained a deep fascination for me in South Africa because the future seemed so miserable. I searched for hope in prophecy. The only certainty was Mandela and Mugabe’s rule and it depressed me COMPLETELY. That’s like being thrown into the pits of hell to be left to rot and scream forever with nobody ever listening.

I’ve never been too keen to run around the world, because each place has its problems and perhaps you end up jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. These days I’m getting more comfortable dealing with the Devils I know than the Devils I don’t know!

I was fascinated by prophecy and prediction and I wondered if there was a science behind it. Everything we see and experience in life is driven by laws of physics which are perfect. At the atomic level – the universe runs like clockwork. The universe is ordered. It is composed of logical rules and many things in it can be mathematically predicted.

I always thought that there is no conflict between religion and science. In the end, they must surely be the same thing.

Even if religion were a complete lie, there would have to be scientific logic indicating why this is so.

But its funny, when you start asking big questions – like – how the universe got here, what is outside the universe, etc… you suddenly find that you move from science into the bizarre – into the esoteric. Suddenly, that pure mathematical logic of life and science gives you weirder and weirder thoughts. Thus science and logic can lead to the completely bizarre.

Scientists claim that there is no God, no spirituality, etc. But those are the modern scientists who are like that. The very science of the modern athiest scientists of today was actually built largely by men who were religious – Edmund Halley, Newton, Euler. Euler created most of modern mathematics. He is the “Isaac Newton” of engineering. He was a devout Christian who when he went blind did complex mathematical calculations in his head. He believed he could prove God’s existence mathematically. Isaac Newton, the inventor of calculus also spent a large portion of his life searching for The Bible Code.

I don’t think Scientists have all the answers – not even to basic questions like, “why are we here” or “how did we get here”. They have many assumptions and guesses of their own which could fall apart. Their whole theory of Darwinism is based largely on the concept of “gradualism” – the theory that things on earth change gradually and that small changes over a long period of time result in big changes.

But science has also discovered that the past is anything but smooth and gradualistic. Scientists now acknowledge that meteors have wiped out much life on Earth in the past and that in the last 75,000 years at least 3 (maybe more) super-volcanoes of 100km in diameter have created mini-ice ages and wiped out much life. The Earth’s history is anything but gradualistic. It is filled with catastrophes.

Then there is the crucial issue of “random mutation” in Darwinistic theory – this is a huge problem by itself – but let’s not go there.

Oh, and by the way, the ANC loves saying “all humans originally came from southern Africa” – and I say: RUBBISH!

I even pondered the other day the possibility that maybe entire continents have been depopulated of humans only to be rediscovered and repopulated by humans thousands or tens of thousands of years later.

We know a lot, but there is a lot we don’t know.

Then we get people who claim to have special powers or knowledge or contacts. Entire religions are based on such claims. Then there are the psychics and the prophets – some of whom did not found religions, but who gained tremendous influence and followings.

I used to be fascinated by them. Long before Siener Van Rensburg was getting Afrikaners’ attention, I was fascinated by prophets and psychics in the western world – Edgar Cayce and many others. There are lots of prophets and psychics out there.

Sometimes, some of them seem to have some special knowledge or even foreknowledge. Mostly they flunk out.

At one time, I went and picked out the best prophecies and predictions – things which I could prove were really good.

Many people cite Van Rensburg’s prophecies, but the problem is, proving that these things were said in this way a long time back. I am very wary of “modern interpretations” of prophecies. People take the same old prophecies which were wrong in the past and reinterpret them and claim that now they are current and can be applied to the current situation. I discovered that many “great prophets” start like this. Someone comes along and claims that a prophet/psychic predicted a dozen things which all came true. But all you have is word of mouth as your evidence. You can’t read a book published years before wherein all these claims are made. But now that attention is drawn to that person, now everyone watches. And from then onwards, its all downhill because the prophet’s written predictions never match his past claimed successes. I’ve seen this happen to many psychics. Just when interest is aroused, and large numbers of people are watching… the prophet/psychic hits one failure after another. I’ve concluded that prophecy backfires on those punting it.

When people wrote a lot about Van Rensburg’s successes, I wanted to find old books – really old books – wherein his predictions were written. I only found two books with excerpts of his predictions in them.

One book discussed his prediction of De La Rey’s death wherein the final result was somewhat different to his own interpretation of it (showing how difficult interpretation is).

In theory prophecies could take centuries to come true as well.

Then there is the issue of the interpretations of the predictions. For example, many of Van Rensburg’s predictions are presumed to be relevant to today – but then what of the Osewa Brandwag of World War II, who presumed then, that Van Rensburg’s prophecies about Germany winning a World War, were about to come true?

If Van Rensburg clearly stated that his predictions would come true under “black rule” why then did the Osewa Brandwag assume it would happen in WWII when there was no prospect of black rule?

Why did they get that wrong? Why did they believe it was due to come true then?

Or is the interpretation of Van Rensburg’s prophecies far more difficult and much trickier than people think?

I’ve seen some pretty marvellous prophecies. In my searches in the past, I actually have old books where I can show you a real prophecy, predicted years before, which actually came true 100% as predicted.

The best example in my arsenal is a 1967 book by Lobsang Rampa, called “Chapters of Life”. In it he predicted that in 1981 the world would start warming up.

Go and look at all global warming records, and you’ll see that suddenly, for no explicable reason, the world’s temperature increased in 1981. Nowadays Global warming is on everyone’s lips, but in the 1970’s, top scientists were predicting a “mini-ice age” for the 1980s! So the psychic was right and the scientists were wrong.

BUT, in Chapters of Life, you’ll find dozens of other prophecies – all of which failed miserably and none of which ever came true.

So there is one splendid success amidst many failures.

In Christianity, some prophecies, like the creation of Israel, took 2,000 years to come true, but there are many which have not yet come true. Will they all come true or not?

Many people cite Nostradamus as a great prophet, but I’m not convinced. I think it takes a great stretch of the imagination to think he was extremely successful. Ditto for Edgar Cayce.

Many people predicted World War III and nuclear war and it never happened. Others predicted earthquakes and that also did not happen – not in the way they said it would.

If messages come from other dimensions/sources – do they have a purpose? (Like goading people into action?) Are some prophecies meant to “kill/prevent” other prophecies from coming true?

Right now someone is out with new predictions of World War III occuring between 2007-2012 based on Nostradamus I think! I think World War III’s skirmishes may already be under way… but its not exploded into conventional or nuclear forms. There is no certainty that it will even go that far.

But what happens if we apply logic and mathematics to prophecy and prediction? This is how experts try to predict political outcomes, economics and war.

And that’s where The Prediction Experiment comes in. In the end, all prophecies/predictions relate to real-world physical events and these are normally measurable and observable.

When I thought of The Prediction Experiment originally, what I wanted to do was this – take “predictions” – any prediction – and catalogue it – write it down. Its no good someone saying, “I predicted this” after the event. I wanted to have a record of predictions BEFORE the events – that way we have a date and time, and a statement. Then we measure it against that.

When I originally thought of this, almost 2 years ago, I wrote a simple program and I began doing The Prediction Experiments for myself. I applied it to anything. To my personal life, to things I read newspapers predicting some event (e.g. price of petrol) – in a few weeks or a few months time.

The result? I was amazed at how wrong one can be!! Sometimes, at a point in time, something will seem very certain – even a few weeks or months in advance. You would be amazed at how many times “certainties” change!

My first pass of The Prediction Experiment has led me to coin the First Law of Prediction (mimicking those Laws of Physics!), and here it is: “If a possible future event seems to be almost certain months or years into the future, chances are it won’t happen!”

Doesn’t that just suck!?

What I did want to do, is not just write down and measure which prophecies and predictions failed or succeeded, but… I wanted to analyse them statistically and measure them. For that, I did another thing. At the time of the prediction I recorded a “probability” that it would come true. This would later be analysed along with the reality of what happened. I felt that this could give you a number which you could use to say that you “over estimate” or “under estimate” by a certain percentage.

So one aspect of The Prediction Experiment could be for us to have a database of recorded prophecies. We record the source, the prediction and we specify a time-line and a probability. If it does not come true by a certain date, then you record it as failed.

In essence, I’m applying Scientific Method to PROPHECY. But it need not be religious/occult/psychic prophecy – but also to “predict” – where we look at a situation and analyse it and “predict” something and then record whether it did or did not happen. It could be simple – like, “I predict that by December Mugabe will still be alive”. What is the chance of that coming true, or what is the chance of him dying between now and then?

In a way, bookmakers are people who are “measuring predictions” – e.g. with a horse-race or a soccer match.

When defining a Prediction you end up with a lot of new problems. You have to define accurately what you are predicting. You can make a prediction so vague in terms of content and time that it will happen for sure. But even that is an area of experiment.

I did wonder for example, if one could come up with a formula or a method of making successful predictions or predictions which have a 70% chance of coming true! I’ve heard for example, that there are “fortune tellers” who “read your body language” and who have a few general statements that tend to work on people. Everybody wants to get rich or find love. But are there general predictions you can make that have a good chance of coming true next week or next month?

Oh and that’s another part of The Prediction Experiment – not waiting for next year – but predicting something for next week or next month and then analysing it. Which reminds me that the Suidlanders would have totally sucked because they couldn’t even get it right within a few days!!

There are 3 basic areas we could focus on:-
1. Politics.
2. Economics.
3. War.

Of the above, economics is the easiest to measure. You could experiment with something simple like predicting the range of the Gold price or the Rand/Dollar exchange rate for a week or a month.

The Prediction Experiment is broad in concept in that there are 1001 different problems and issues we could deal with and would have to analyse. But the aim is to apply conscious logic to trying to learn something from it.

It could be as simple as taking the pronouncements of President Mbeki or George Bush and recording them and determining how correct they were – or random people could come up with their own ideas and we record and monitor them. That would be the “Prediction Laboratory” approach.

But we can also deal with the grander “theory” and try to figure out:-
1. Can you predict/guess the future – if so, with what certainty?
2. How would you do it?
3. How can you possibly guess that which is unknown? Is that not a logical impossibility?

I have 2 fascinating old books because the topic of Cycles comes into it. You get people like Dr Ravi Batra(sp?) who wrote a lovely book in the 1990’s predicting total collapse and chaos at the end of the 1990’s. He based it on his own cyclic theory of history.

It never came to pass, but I loved some of his logic. He basically said that in history, history is controlled by 3 types of people: Warriors, Intellectuals (where priests=intellectuals) and Businessmen/Rich people. He reckoned all cycles of history can be traced to the one group of people defeating the other in a sort of “rock, paper, scissors” way. As I recall the warriors always defeat the rich, and the warriors in turn are defeated by the intellectuals/priests, and so forth. Its not exactly accurate – I’m writing from memory and its been several years since I looked at his stuff.

I have a lovely book I bought in the 1980’s about wargaming in the Pentagon. The US Govt/Military “wargame” political and military scenarious. (Obviously it does not always work out exactly as predicted hey!) They call in experts who then take part in role-playing in war/political games. They try to get inside the mind of the enemy. They play “Red” and “Blue” sides and they analyse the results.

I would love to try and see if we can do stuff like this with relation to Zimbabwe or South Africa – and whether we can look at things from “the enemy’s point of view”.

Can we guess Mugabe’s next move?

There was a fascinating book called Megatrends written in America. Megatrends may have some good possibilities for prediction because if one can figure out current/future “megatrends” then that can be factored into the “calculation”. For example, one of the megatrends back then was people moving from the North of the USA and settling in the South.

What are modern megatrends?
Is there an increase/decrease in religion?
Is ANC membership growing/decreasing?
Is the West growing stronger/weaker?

I have two old books about Cycles – written in the 1950’s. The author believed he could find cycles in almost anything. But when I studied it closer and looked at his mathematics I reckoned it was junk.

Among the problems one faces are:-
1. Defining a prediction.
2. Defining a cycle.

I’ve heard people claiming that wars, for example, are cyclical. But I’ve never seen the proof of that. The theory is that younger generations forget about the horrors of war and soon try it. Once they’ve tried war, it is so etched in their minds that there is peace for a generation or so and then its tried again. But I have seen no proof that wars are cyclic.

Either that, or one has to define or redefine the world “cycle”.

So there is a lot of food for thought for you, and as the weeks go by, Readers are welcome to add their thoughts and I’ll post them. At the moment the system is cumbersome but hopefully within a month Reader’s comments will be ever easier to add and the Volunteers can control it.

So what are your thoughts and observations relating to Prediction and Prophecy of the future…? And is there anything we can do with it? Jan]

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