“Prediction is not the same thing as understanding, but in the absence of prediction, we can certainly doubt understanding.”

— Robyn Dawes

Source: Everyday Irrationality: How Pseudo-Scientists, Lunatics, and the Rest of Us Systematically Fail to Think Rationally (2001), Chapter 6, “Three Specific Irrationalities of Probabilistic Judgment” (p. 97)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Nov. 16, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Prediction is not the same thing as understanding, but in the absence of prediction, we can certainly doubt understandi…" by Robyn Dawes?

Robyn Dawes11

American psychologist 1936–2010

Related quotes

“The illusion that we understand the past fosters overconfidence in our ability to predict the future.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow

“You can hit a nail on the head, or cause a machine to do so, and get a fairly predictable result. Hit a dog on the head, and it will either dodge, bite back, or die, but it will never again react in the same way. We can predict only those things we set up to be predictable, not what we encounter in the real world of living and reactive processes.”

Bill Mollison (1928–2016) Australian permaculturist

Source: Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988), chapter 2.2

“Predictability is not how things will go, but how they can go.”

Raheel Farooq Pakistani writer

Kalam (2018)

“You can only predict things after they’ve happened.”

John Allen Paulos book A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

Section 1, “Politics, Economics, and the Nation” Introduction (p. 7; quoting Eugene Ionesco)
A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1995)

“But a theory is not like an airline or bus timetable. We are not interested simply in the accuracy of its predictions. A theory also serves as a base for thinking. It helps us to understand what is going on by enabling us to organize our thoughts. Faced with a choice between a theory which predicts well but gives us little insight into how the system works and one which gives us this insight but predicts badly, I would choose the latter, and I am inclined to think that most economists would do the same.”

Ronald H. Coase (1910–2013) British economist and author

1960s-1980s, "How should economists choose?" (1981)

“A long standing prediction (Milgrom 1983) of MOND is that rotating galaxy curves will fall on a single mass-velocity relation with slope 4: Mb \propto Vf4. This prediction is realized in multiple independent data sets. Gas rich galaxies fall where predicted by MOND with no free parameters. There are not many predictions in extragalactic astronomy that fare so well a quarter century after their publication. … a physical understanding for why galaxy formation in the context of ΛCDM should pick out the particular phenomenology predicted a priori by MOND remains wanting.”

Stacy McGaugh (1964) American astronomer

[Stacy McGaugh, 2011, The Baryonic Tully-Fisher Relation of Gas-Rich Galaxies as a Test of ΛCDM and MOND, p. 16, ApJ, http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.2934]

“No one can predict the future exactly, but we know two things: it’s going to be different, and it must be rooted in today’s world.”

Peter Thiel (1967) American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager

Source: ZERO to ONE

“What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]? That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”

Newt Gingrich (1943) Professor, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

"What Was Newt Gingrich Talking About?" http://www.slate.com/content/slate/blogs/weigel/2010/09/12/what_was_newt_gingrich_talking_about.html <br class="br">2010s

“As with physical gravity, an understanding of the forces of social attraction support predictions, or at least the broad outlines of futuristic anticipation, since these forces of agglomeration and intensification manifestly shape the future.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"Event Horizon" https://web.archive.org/web/20110718030432/http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/index.php/article/detail/304/event-horizon (2011)

“If some lives form a perfect circle, other take shape in ways we cannot predict or always understand. Loss has been part of my journey. But it has also shown me what is precious. So has love for which I can only be grateful.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

“Prediction is not the same thing as understanding, but in the absence of prediction, we can certainly doubt understanding.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Robyn Dawes11

Related quotes

Related topics