Phil Gyford looks at the frequent revisions made by the IMF in its economic forecasts and wonders why anyone pays attention to something so demonstrably unpredictable:
I have no doubt that it's extremely difficult to predict how something that's both complicated and, possibly, hard to define as a country's economy will change with much precision. Which leads me to wonder… why do they try to predict it with this much precision, and why does anyone still take the forecasts seriously?
If (or when) someone calling themselves a futurist rashly made a forecast like this for some time in 10, 20, 50 years, and got it wrong, we'd look back and laugh at their naivety. So why is it fine to be continually this wrong about the year we're currently in? This is a genuine question.
(Image: Pre-science (1 of 2), a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from x1brett's photostream)
