16 Of The Worst Predictions Ever Made By The New York Times

We, humans, all share an immeasurable love for being ahead of the future. Skeptics do it secretly, like scanning through the daily horoscope every 24 hours, rational people tend to be more into calculated economic forecasts, and others just plain love predictions. Sometimes it takes much less than statistical confidence, and we all fall into believing obscure statements.

Partly, it has to do with our inner urge to have control over our future. From weather forecasts to the post-Covid 19 future, it gives us a false sense of certainty. Nothing is more intimidating than a sudden change, and it’s only fair to get hold of anything that feeds us with the illusion of knowing everything.

The old-school New York Times’ predictions are definitely not the first and not the last ones that turned out to be completely wrong. Many of the more recent predictions have proven to be just as false.

For example, in 2009, it seemed like everyone was ready to start a decade of space tourism in the 2010s. “By 2020 you'll have seen private citizens circumnavigate the moon," Eric Anderson of Space Adventures announced in 2009. Meanwhile, Elon Musk stated that “I'm going to go out on a limb and say that by 2020 there will be serious plans to go to Mars with people."

But the reality now is very different. After seven people paid to travel to space in the first decade of the 21st century, space tourism flights were halted in 2009. The delays have left people who signed up for such travel waiting.

Rob Walker, a contributor to The New York Times, believes that when it comes to predictions, anything is possible, but he urges everyone to take “a closer look at how often definitive predictions about permanent change are simply extrapolations of recently observable trends taken to some maximum extreme.”

Even though speculation about what may happen is useful, Rob stresses that reality may unfold in “more complex and subtle ways than predicted. Because if you’re considering a time horizon of 12 years as opposed to 12 months, other things will happen—good and bad—that you cannot foresee but that will have some effect, however oblique, on whatever it is you are predicting.”

Therefore, reading anything that targets the future had better be done with a grain of salt, or two.