Predictions Quotes - Page 21

• I see that the life of this place is always emerging beyond expectation or prediction or typicality, that it is unique, given to the world minute by minute, only once, never to be repeated. And this is when I see that this life is a miracle, absolutely worth having, absolutely worth saving. We are alive within mystery, by miracle.

  Wendell Berry

  Unique, Expectations, Miracle

  Wendell Berry (2001). “Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition”, Counterpoint Press

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• Contrary to popular accounts, very few scientists in the world - possibly none - have a sufficiently thorough, 'big picture' understanding of the climate system to be relied upon for a prediction of the magnitude of global warming. To the public, we all might seem like experts, but the vast majority of us work on only a small portion of the problem.

  Roy Spencer

  Understanding, Majority, Climate

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• When you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better.

  William of Ockham

  Two, Theory, Competing

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• Earth has cooled since 1998 in defiance of the predictions by the UN-IPCC....The global temperature for 2007 was the coldest in a decade and the coldest of the millennium...which is why 'global warming' is now called 'climate change.'

  Richard Keen

  Climate, Earth, Temperature

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• To date, no convincing evidence for AGW (anthropogenic global warming) has been discovered. And recent global climate behavior is not consistent with AGW model predictions.

  Richard Courtney

  Convincing Evidence, Climate, Global Warming

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• I have been a biologist for a long time, and I hope I never stop getting shivers in my spine when I think about the beauty of how we come to know things in biology. Biologists make predictions, then they go out into the field or the lab to see if their predictions hold up. When hundreds of predictions of this sort are fulfilled, a theory reaches the point where it becomes certain, at least on a broad level. And that is where we are with evolution.

  Darrel R. Falk

  Thinking, Long, Levels

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• Only a tiny fraction of corpses fossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as molecular genetics and geographical distribution, would be overwhelmingly strong. On the other hand, evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water.

  Richard Dawkins

  Strong, Hands, Water

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.154, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Science gains from it [the pendulum] more than one can expect. With its huge dimensions, the apparatus presents qualities that one would try in vain to communicate by constructing it on a small [scale], no matter how carefully. Already the regularity of its motion promises the most conclusive results. One collects numbers that, compared with the predictions of theory, permit one to appreciate how far the true pendulum approximates or differs from the abstract system called 'the simple pendulum'.

  Leon Foucault

  Science, Simple, Numbers

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• The theory of the earth is the science which describes and explains changes that the terrestrial globe has undergone from its beginning until today, and which allows the prediction of those it shall undergo in the future. The only way to understand these changes and their causes is to study the present-day state of the globe in order to gradually reconstruct its earlier stages, and to develop probable hypotheses on its future state. Therefore, the present state of the earth is the only solid base on which the theory can rely.

  Horace-Benedict de Saussure

  Science, Order, Understanding

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• There is no hope for the fanciful idea of reaching the moon because of insurmountable barriers to escaping the earth's gravity

  Forest Ray Moulton

  Science, Moon, Technology

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• The more unpredictable the world is the more we rely on predictions.

  Steve Rivkin

  Business, World, Unpredictable

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• Astrologers were greatly impressed, and misled, by what they believed to be confirming evidence-so much so that they were quite unimpressed by any unfavorable evidence. Moreover, by making their interpretations and prophecies sufficiently vague they were able to explain away anything that might have been a refutation of the theory had the theory and the prophecies been more precise. In order to escape falsification they destroyed the testability of their theory. It is a typical soothsayer's trick to predict things so vaguely that the predictions can hardly fail: that they become irrefutable.

  Karl Popper

  Order, Typical, Might

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• We have three post-PC devices: the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, the revolutionary device that defined a whole new categoryit's outstripping the wildest of predictions.

  Tim Cook

  Iphone, Ipads, Ipods

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• What's the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we're willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?

  Frank Sherwood Rowland

  Waiting, Use, Enough

  "In pictures: cutting edge climate science, communication, and kittens from the 2013 AGU conference" by Dana Nuccitelli, www.theguardian.com. December 17, 2013.

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• There is no basis for the ardent hopes and positive statements made as to the safe and successful use of the dirigible balloon or flying machine, or both, for commercial transportation or as weapons of war.

  George W. Melville

  War, Successful, Flying

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• God is infinite, so His universe must be too. Thus is the excellence of God magnified and the greatness of His kingdom made manifest; He is glorified not in one, but in countless suns; not in a single earth, a single world, but in a thousand thousand, I say in an infinity of worlds.

  Giordano Bruno

  Greatness, Excellence, World

  "On the Infinite Universe and Worlds". Book by Giordano Bruno, 1584.

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• The only useful function of a statistician is to make predictions, and thus to provide a basis for action.

  W. Edwards Deming

  Statistics, Action, Function

  Journal of the American Statistical Association Quoted in W.A. Wallis' The Statistical Research Group, 1942-1945 Volume 75, Number 370, June 19 (p. 321)

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• And so, a prediction, and my heartfelt wish for you: as you get older, your self will diminish and you will grow in love. YOU will gradually be replaced by LOVE. If you have kids, that will be a huge moment in your process of self-diminishment. You really won't care what happens to YOU, as long as they benefit. That's one reason your parents are so proud and happy today. One of their fondest dreams has come true: you have accomplished something difficult and tangible that has enlarged you as a person and will make your life better, from here on in, forever.

  George Saunders

  Dream, Love You, Kids

  George Saunders (2014). “Congratulations, by the Way: Some Thoughts on Kindness”, p.42, A&C Black

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• All buildings are predictions. All predictions are wrong.

  Stewart Brand

  Building

  Stewart Brand (1995). “How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built”, p.311, Penguin

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• As for the depiction of the Catholic church, it's not meant to be a prediction

  Dan Simmons

  Catholic, Church, Depiction

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• A prediction about the direction of the stock market tells you nothing about where stocks are headed, but a whole lot about the person doing the predicting.

  Warren Buffett

  Investing, Persons, Whole

  "Financial Experts Could Be Hazardous to Your Wealth" by Dr. Robert R. Johnson, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 6, 2017.

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• Whenever people have used religious documents to make accurate predictions about our base knowledge of the physical world, they have been famously wrong.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Religious, Science, People

  Neil Degrasse Tyson (2010). “The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist”, p.183, Prometheus Books

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• . . . in America, we have achieved the Orwellian prediction - enslaved, the people have been programmed to love their bondage and are left to clutch only mirage-like images of freedom, its fables and fictions. The new slaves are linked together by vast electronic chains of television that imprison not their bodies but their minds. Their desires are programmed, their tastes manipulated, their values set for them.

  Gerry Spence

  Tyrants, America, People

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• Politics is not predictions and politics is not observations. Politics is what we do. Politics is what we do, politics is what we create, by what we work for, by what we hope for and what we dare to imagine.

  Paul Wellstone

  Politics, Imagine, Dare

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• If you are in trouble anywhere in the world, an airplane can fly over and drop flowers, but a helicopter can land and save your life.

  Igor Sikorsky

  Funny, Life, Flower

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