Friday, October 19, 2007

I Also Am A Fortune Teller (หมอดูฟันธง)*

I predict that Robert Axelrod will win a Nobel Prize for this work.

Well, he should anyway.

Now before you doubt my ability as a fortune teller, my Nobel prediction is currently 100% correct! In the late 1980's/early 1990's, I told my friends that Ahmed Zewail would surely win a Nobel prize in the future after listening to his talk about femtochemistry.

Well, one data point is probably a fluke anyway.

If you have not read "The Evolution of Cooperation", you should really take a look.

--- - ---- - ----- ---------
*Of course, fortune tellers seem to know the future by doing these:

1. Predict dramatic things.
2. Predict often.
3. Ignore wrong predictions.
4. Focus exclusively on correct predictions.
5. Master cold reading.

The correct question we should ask ourselves is "Does the fortune teller performs better than chance?" not "Does the fortune teller predicts anything correctly?" I'm quite sure that all fortune tellers are fraud. However, if any of them is real, there are many Nobel prizes awaiting those who can deduce the nature of time from those real fortune teller's performance.

No comments: