One wonders: With all the data and sophisticated software, how can meteorologists get so much so wrong so often? Lots of ruined picnics, games, and even out door weddings, all spoiled by faulty forecasts. But actually, there’s a better question to ask: How can meteorologists get anything right at any time when the phenomenon they predict is the result of an invisible moving fluid?
And that’s what all of us run up against when we try to predict the behavior of others. Yes, we get it right sometimes, but too often we miss the forecast. Too much of what we are is invisible and fluid. After undergoing thousands of years of evolution and facing the same kinds of daily circumstances, shouldn’t anything we do be predictable? One might think so, but that we get anything right about human behavior is a wonder in itself.
Like meteorologists, we get our human forecasts right only about half or little over half the time. We complain when rain spoils our picnics, games, and out door activities, but in making more mistakes about human behavior than any meteorologist makes over weather, we still don’t decry our own erroneous forecasts with the same intensity as we complain about those of the meteorologists. Human weather is every bit as tough—possibly even tougher—to predict as is atmospheric weather.
We can, of course, do what the meteorologists do: Give estimates. They tell us that there’s a 30% chance of precipitation, or 40%, or 100%. Usually, the percentages above 60% are fairly accurate. Somewhere in the region under question, there will be precipitation. But below 60%, well, they’re probably making more guess than science. And you and your predictions? “He’s got a 50% chance of losing his temper. She has a 70% chance of being upset. They have a 20% chance of staying together.”
We certainly would like to have accurate weather forecasts, but we might trade them for a few very accurate predictions about each other’s behavior. “If it rains on her wedding, she will definitely cry.”
Time to be mindful of our predictions about one another. The atmosphere is a fluid in motion, but its constituents—molecules of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, water vapor, and other gases—though invisible are all quantifiable. The constituents of human behavior will never be completely quantifiable, regardless of our efforts to make them so. The data can be thrown out as soon as someone says, “The rain made our wedding day special.”
And that’s what all of us run up against when we try to predict the behavior of others. Yes, we get it right sometimes, but too often we miss the forecast. Too much of what we are is invisible and fluid. After undergoing thousands of years of evolution and facing the same kinds of daily circumstances, shouldn’t anything we do be predictable? One might think so, but that we get anything right about human behavior is a wonder in itself.
Like meteorologists, we get our human forecasts right only about half or little over half the time. We complain when rain spoils our picnics, games, and out door activities, but in making more mistakes about human behavior than any meteorologist makes over weather, we still don’t decry our own erroneous forecasts with the same intensity as we complain about those of the meteorologists. Human weather is every bit as tough—possibly even tougher—to predict as is atmospheric weather.
We can, of course, do what the meteorologists do: Give estimates. They tell us that there’s a 30% chance of precipitation, or 40%, or 100%. Usually, the percentages above 60% are fairly accurate. Somewhere in the region under question, there will be precipitation. But below 60%, well, they’re probably making more guess than science. And you and your predictions? “He’s got a 50% chance of losing his temper. She has a 70% chance of being upset. They have a 20% chance of staying together.”
We certainly would like to have accurate weather forecasts, but we might trade them for a few very accurate predictions about each other’s behavior. “If it rains on her wedding, she will definitely cry.”
Time to be mindful of our predictions about one another. The atmosphere is a fluid in motion, but its constituents—molecules of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, water vapor, and other gases—though invisible are all quantifiable. The constituents of human behavior will never be completely quantifiable, regardless of our efforts to make them so. The data can be thrown out as soon as someone says, “The rain made our wedding day special.”
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