#prognosticators

Reluctant prognosticator Clyde Bruckman (the great Peter Boyle) is stymied, not so much by the pitfalls inevitably bound and fettered to foretelling future events, but by the Official Title of a certain music festival. Afterward, a "chance" encounter with an "inconspicuous" man foreshadows a great deal of homicidal activity to come. Season 3, episode 4 of The X-Files.

Clyde Bruckman demonstrates that his brand of augury does not necessarily extend to winning the lottery, prompting Existential (of the rhetorical persuasion...) queries, and despair. Mulder (David Duchovny) is then set straight about other matters.

Peter Boyle, with a brilliant performance as Clyde Bruckman, reluctant sage/soothsayer, not only quasi-uncannily detects the authorship of a newly received missive, but (politely) passes along the author's (polite) greetings to the FBI agents at hand: Scully (Gillian Anderson), and the aforementioned Mulder (David Duchovny). Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose, 1995.

Isaiah 47:12-13

Stand now with thine enchantments, and with the multitude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured from thy youth; if so be thou shalt be able to profit, if so be thou mayest prevail.

13Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee.

Th…

People over-estimate what can be done in the short term, but under-estimate what can be done in the long term.

Weight loss is a perfect example. People think they can get in shape in a couple weeks before going to the beach (hard to do). But they don't realize how much weight they could lose over a year by eating just 100 calories under their daily metabolic usage (answer: 10 pounds per year, i.e. 100 pounds per decade! from 1 tweak).

Futurists also over-estimate the magnitude of short term changes and under-estimate the long term magnitude. I remember there were so many prognosticators in the 90's, during the Internet boom -- it was all New Economy this and paradigm shift that.