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#1 2022-10-11 12:22:16

Mars_B4_Moon
Member
Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 8,896

Predictions that were correct, prediction that were wrong

I might do a Top 5 predictions done correct and wrong. Newmars as a community has made many predictions, some predictions were by users themselves others were news articles they posted. There have been many 'predictions' over the years some accurate, some not accurate. Will Mars evolve into something different to Earth or if hundreds go to Mars will it also have Oracles and Astrologists and the pseudoscientific voodoo and belief just as we have on Earth?

Many different types of people make predictions about the future, some poetry to forecast exploration, change in geology, environment, war and economics, some make jokes about the Earth's future in comedy, poetry and music, others make art works of escapism in film and painted art, soon AI will perhaps do almost the very same thing humans have done.

In Western Art and Culture, the early Atomic age was generally given a positive aesthetic in early scifi it centered around a view of the future from the perspective of the 1950s and 1960s. In media you had tv cartoon like the Jetsons and scifi books use a distinct, brightly-colored art style. Art often depicted imagery associated with "traditionally American" values and the power of atomics, particularly a belief in the nuclear family, this was before the scares of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island or Fukushima and media tv news reported fears about nuclear dangers. In the late 70s, 80s and 1990s there was a lot of Japanese techno hype, some thought Japan with its tech and robots and money would simply buy up the whole world, that was before the 'Bubble Burst' and they lost 2 decades to economic stagnation, yet Japan never fully collapsed with so maybe it shows there still is something to the mix of technology and traditional Japan way of life?  After the terrorist attacks of 911 and the changes that followed such as 'Patriot Act' there were people who said our world would never be the same, Orwellian cameras everywhere, watching every email and tv manipulation, hedonism and drugs, all kinds of psychological manipulation and classical conditioning the Huxley Brave New World and George Orwell 1984 and Endless War all rolled into one. There have been all kinds of Predictions from fear over global economics an 'Amero' or NAFT digital currency or Bitcoin taking over the world, fear of a Global Virus in films like '12 monkeys' to fears of Civil War in the USA and secessionist separatist movements of Alaska, Texas, California that would break away from the Union. There were also prediction of UAP 'disclosure', UFO Sightings to other prediction of a happy future, Utopia prediction of zero poverty and people going to work in 'flying cars'.  There have been other predictions like 'a black swan event' damages the world economy or an October Surprise during election cycles.


'American Moon Base prediction... - tell me what you think'
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=1161

clark wrote:

I think we will be back on the moon, with a base, by 2015-2020.

Clark even asked for the thread to be locked and done and complete as his prediction had already been made true because of something Bush junior said while lying to the US public.

Clark had taken a 'pig in a poke' the French un chat en poche or buy a fish in the sea as the Semitic culture of Malta say, Chinese to buy a cow 牛 over there in another far away mountain 山, or bought the German die Katze im Sack kaufen
some had taken it as a guarantee America would have Moon colonies by 2020?

clark wrote:

It was fun following this, and more fun being right!

2020 Moon Mars colonies turned out to be false news


TRUE

1
Elon Musk Space-X will transform the Space Industry and the growth of Private Space or Alt space. Back in those early days it was a brave prediction only big Billionaires Branson & Bezos invested and Burt Rutan looked to space, the Soyuz was another option from Russians it sold seats for Space Tourists and Musk's rockets used to fail to achieve goals or blow up, his company was almost bust. SpaceX has since totally changed the business of orbital launch vehicle and transformed the entire space industry.

2
China would become a 'Space Power' build space stations and start landing stuff on Mars. Chinese were still associated with Mao-ism, a Communist country, it beat its down own people, crushed, killed demonstrators but it also started to open up, it wanted future ideas and tech, it traded economically, in an unmanned mission, China sent a monkey, a dog, a rabbit and snails into orbit aboard the unmanned Shenzhou. Some of the old timers did not believe Chinese would go anywhere. 

3
'Don't Trust Putin', he's going to invade the mountainous Unitary parliamentary republic of Georgians in Caucasus region and wants to be a Tsar or USSR Dictator. Not every new mars person listened to Putin critics, Russia had a good relation with America at this time, a War on Terror had begun and Russia was helping keeping NASA on the ISS after the loss of Space Shuttle Columbia. There were also many War or Russian invasion predictions by users like Tom Kalbfus

4
War on Terror maybe has Failures coming. People predicted the Taliban would comeback. Eventually after a long time islamism, jihadis and the Taliban would return in Afghanistan and retake the country. Guys on donkeys and camels, hiding inside caves with IEDs or with AK47s winning, it sounded like a crazy prediction to some, then in August 2021, Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul was captured by the Taliban.

5
AI or Robots will be so good at acting human that humans themselves won't be able to tell the difference, start to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human.

other predictions

WRONG

1
NASA or USA or Mankind will land on Mars somewhere between the next 5-10 years. This has been an ongoing prediction since the late 60s and since the 'Space Exploration Initiative' of 1989 there has never really been a political will to land on Mars or colonize Mars, no true deadline set no "We choose to go to the Moon" JFK speeches. 

2
India would become the world's number 1 super power by 2020, maybe it was a way for economist types to get people to part with their savings and invest them in some far away scammer place, maybe it was overhyped chest thumping from Hindu nationalist media types? Some said India had to many issues and problems mired in superstitions, ignorance, a lot of caste system social baggage and bigotry and orthodoxy.

3
British will remain inside the EU, no Brexit.

4
Nation building, Afghanistan can become like post WW2 Germany or Japan. They won't riot, chop each others heads off and burn down embassies every time they hear about a rumor some guy dropped a Koran or some person drawing a funny cartoon.

5
The Hollywood crazy pot smoking hard liquor timeline. Skynet Terminator timeline, the Soviet Russian USSR will be around forever in space as seen in 2001 A Space Odyssey back on Earth humanity will Nuke ourselves to death, eschatological beliefs involving the LHC and Planet X and 2012 Mayan Doomsday prophecy. There have also been predictions based more on feelings rather than science or reality predictions like  we will find humanoid animal alien life and then UFOs will invade, humans will invent stuff like FTL 'Warp Drive'.

Even in our modern age is there an element of belief in our prediction, maybe an influence of politics, bias and irrational excessively credulous fallacy to our predictions? It is almost impossible to truly predict the future but that does not stop people from trying, with the growth of AI people can expect predictions to come more often with the help of the artificial machine mind. In the past visionary humans of the Earth often had a mystic, religion, supernatural belief element to it, the predictions of 'Nostradamus' still believed by some, a lot of people today still follow astrologers or believe Nostrodamus had foreseen the 911 attacks. In ancient Greece they had an oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by mystical elements, Planetary alignments, a perception of Ghostly happenings or Comets seen as a message from the Heavens. In our books fantasy folklore stories of Things that were, things that are...and some things....that have not yet come to pass.  The Seer they appear in our movies and fictional books, 'The Matrix' a Mad Prophet or Mad Oracle sometimes appearing in Dune, the clairvoyant appears in scifi tv shows like Babylon 5 in the LOTR book and movie very cryptic sentence, uttered by Galadriel in The Fellowship of the Ring; after refusing the One Ring Galadriel said “I Pass the Test.” she could see a future but it was uncertain, she also had her own personal test maybe fighting her fear of being tempted by One-Ring to Rule them All. In China, another culture with superstitions vision bones were used for divination, Celts had druids,  visions were seen by old Hindu people of India and the Hawaiian temples, Mesoamerica cultures had 'visions' predictions of a future from Pre-Columbian Americas, in Scandanavia Norse mythology, Odin lost an eye but gained internal sight. The Ouija board a very Victorian pastime even Kings and Queens would be convinced by 'mystics' to try talk with the dead,  Tarot card decks were used for 'readings' specifically designed for occult purposes.

In our real world sometimes there are true visionary dreamers, people who imagine up an invention that is later created in real life or they have a vision of something that is yet discovered, Friedrich Kekulé, a German organic chemist, in a waking dream. Slumber or day dream, he supposedly saw rows of atoms dancing around which eventually formed the image of a snake devouring its own tail, in his 'vision' he discovered Benzene is an organic chemical compound with the molecular formula C6H6.

In fantasy media sometimes scifi books or Hollywood got it right and wrong.

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-10-11 16:09:11)

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