Prediction Fatigue
Last year, after the 2006 Canadian election, I made the four political predictions. Here they are, with the results:
| Prediction | Result |
|---|---|
| a grand coalition government between the Liberals and Conservatives! | WRONG: something closer to an unlikely coalition between the Conservatives and NDP is shaping up |
| Ujjal Dosanjh as the next leader of the Liberals! | WRONG: as ably predicted by Sacha, the winner was Stephane Dion. |
| more photos of Peter MacKay looking forlornly at Belinda Stronach! | WRONG: but Condi Rice? Eh? Eh? |
| or even better, she crosses the floor again so that she can once again join a party that is actually in power! | WRONG: though she did change her hair colour |
After the 2007 Macworld Expo where nobody had a stake in the predictions they made as to whether Apple would announce a mobile phone, I realized that a prediction market, wouldn't work for product releases, because people would squabble about definitions. It's a tablet! It's a computer! That happens to have a phone!
I'm pretty sure I want one, since everybody else does (with the iPhone, mobile phones, already a status symbol, just consolidated their power over us), though it won't document my world quite like a Nokia N95 would. I had more to say about the iPhone, and wanted to point to people like Mark or Dave (which I wanted to do in a separate post titled, cleverly, "iCurmudgeon") but instead, I'll just say that I think I'm over my prediction fatigue and will go back to using lines from rap songs as my weblog's taglines.