Do I know anything for certain?
YES!
When so-called "authority" predict the future - THEY ARE WRONG.
And yet - we always believe them. Why?
Examples:
____
____
2912 Mayan Calendar Apocalypse
1910 : Halley's Comet
A worldwide panic ensued, stoked by the media and such newspaper headlines as “Comet May Kill All Earth Life, Says Scientist.”
1831 THE GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT
William Miller began preaching in 1831 that the end of the world as we know it would occur with the second coming of Jesus Christ in 1843. He attracted as many as 100,000 followers who believed that they would be carried off to heaven when the date arrived. When the 1843 prediction failed to materialize, Miller recalculated and determined that the world would actually end in 1844.
1914 / 1975 ARMAGEDDON : Jehovah's Witnesses.
____
____
"With over fifteen types of foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big share of the market for itself." -- Business Week, 1968.
_______
_______
"To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth - all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances." -- Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, in 1926.
_____
______
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." -- Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895.
_____
_____
"Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years." - Alex Lewyt, president of vacuum cleaner company Lewyt Corp., in the New York Times in 1955.
_____
_____
"There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will." -- Albert Einstein, 1932.
_____
_____
"The cinema is little more than a fad. It's canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage." -- Charlie Chaplin, actor, producer, director, and studio founder, 1916.
____
____
"The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." -- Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, British Post Office, 1878.
_____
______
"[Television] won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." -- Darryl Zanuck, movie producer, 20th Century Fox, 1946.
____
____
"When the Paris Exhibition [of 1878] closes, electric light will close with it and no more will be heard of it." -- Oxford professor Erasmus Wilson.
____
____
Y2K Computers were to cease functioning.
____
____
ONLINE SHOPPING:
In 1966, Time magazine ran a bold prediction: “Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop—because women like to get out of the house, like to handle merchandise, like to be able to change their minds.”
____
____
1956, when Khrushchev was addressing Western ambassadors at the Polish embassy in Moscow, he told audiences that that Communism’s defeat of capitalism was inevitable.
“History is on our side,” he said. “We will bury you.” Thirty-three years later, Communism collapsed, and two years after that the Soviet Union was dissolved.
_____
_____
in 1964, National Review founder William F. Buckley described them as “so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of anti-music.”
____
____
Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox made a statement on Dec. 4, 1941, to assure everyone that the situation was well in hand. “Whatever happens,” he said, “the U.S. Navy is not going to be caught napping.” The attack on Pearl Harbor occurred three days later.
____
____
In the 70's and 80's, ACID RAIN (we were told repeatedly) would destroy lakes and forests.
Eventually ... investigating scientists reported that they had “turned up no smoking gun; that the problem is far more complicated than it been thought; that other factors combine to harm trees; and that sorting out the cause-and-effect was difficult and in some cases impossible.”
_____
MORAL OF THE STORY?
Intellectual honesty doesn't double-down on error.