[V]ague terms like “probably” and “likely” make it impossible to judge forecasts. When a forecaster says something could or might or may happening, she could or might or may be saying almost anything.
Philip Tetlock & Dan Gardner, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, New York, 2015, pp. 181-182
Prediction, not narration, is the real test of our understanding of the world.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, New York, 2007, p. 133
Social scientists should never predict the future; it’s hard enough to predict the past.
Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, New York, 2011, p. 278
The future is not the realization of our hopes and dreams, a warning to mend our ways, an adventure to inspire us, nor a romance to touch our hearts. The future is just another place in spacetime.
Robin Hanson, ‘The Rapacious Hardscrapple Frontier’, in Damien Broderick (ed.), Year Million: Science at the Far Edge of Knowledge, New York, 2008, p. 168