Quote Originally Posted by Deimos View Post
no. people get bored with their own humdrum existence and dreary lives so they like to dream up fantastical posibilities to make their existence more exciting.

all predictions of disaster are self fulfilling prophecies. we hear about the sucessful predictions because its all in the media. the thing is that most people forget that for every successful prediction there are thousands of unsuccessful ones. but believers cling to this tiny shard of pseudo-evidence as a chance of real proof.

nobody ever sees change coming. its usually only with hindsight that things become clearer. predictions of the end of the world are a crock of alarmist shite. the only way i can see them being useful is for insurance companies who could play up to the hype and get everyone of their customers to pay for "end of the world protection paint, one coat is guaranteed to protect you and yours from all biblical/natural/supernatural apocalypses"
Don't get me wrong Deimos. I agree with your train of thought completely.

The amount of predictions people make is astounding, and usually vague enough that they can be stretched to fit just about any scenario if you wanted. Take for instance the Nostradamus (I think it was him) that predicted the 9/11 incident. I won't bother copy and pasting the prediction, but the translation and interpretation of the prediction fits very well with the 9/11 event. BUT, the thing is, that it was not precise enough to actually predict it, only in hindsight (as you mentioned) were we able to "fit" this prediction with the event. Basically making the prediction useless.

No doubt drugs or dementia plays a part in these 'prophets' as well. I know I could get wacked on hallucinogens and predict a whole mess of crap vaguely enough that it would eventually come true given enough time passes.

I still like to believe that humans are capable of more than we currently understand though so I will not entirely rule out the potential that someone has the ability to predict or see future events. 99.999999% chance humans cannot do such things, but keeping an open mind to the possibility allows for a better understanding of all things.