Why do we bother making predictions?

Science seems to have taken over from religion and I don’t mean it in a good way. The recent coronavirus and its associated events have shown us that little has changed in our reasoning from times of past. Humans in the past followed doctrines mandated by religion and little room was ever provided to question pre-existing norms. The answer to most situations was that God wanted it a certain way. Today, we’ve moved away from the attribution to God however the rationalization remains similar. We’ve simply replaced the attribution from God to Science. All this would be great if science always had the “right” answers but oftentimes this isn’t case.

The latest coronavirus has given “experts” a platform to play an active role in public discourse. Numerous studies have been conducted and models have been created to explain the epistemology and the future of the novel coronavirus. Models with a wide range of predictions have been used to define public policy and for verbal point-scoring amongst acquaintances. The experts have been quoted and misquoted to justify actions in many political spheres. All the inferences of “science” are quoted as objective facts without references to the typos and the asterixes (*). To use another term which has become more common recently, this is the “new normal” that we’re becoming more accustomed to.

The faltering of experts during the coronavirus pandemic highlights how bad we are at making predictions. This is a point Nassim Taleb often emphasizes. Financial experts often make incorrect market predictions. Economists create poor models to predict the trajectory of economies. Scientists make terrible models projecting temperature changes. Despite the lack of accuracy of these predictions, these become the bases for long-term commitments. I hope people out there start thinking of better models for decision making because this doesn’t seem optimal to me.