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Do you happen to have any failed predictions, by any chance?


Depends.

Things I said 100% it would happen, happened, but my predictions in that case are things that I think are obvious (although when I struggled to convince other people it would happen, I concluded it is not THAT obvious).

For example, 100% sure it would happen: US invasion on Iraq would trigger a civil war and sectarian violence. US meddling in Libya would result in unstable country. Egypt election of islamist leader would result into more persecution for minorities.

Something I am right now 100% sure: rebels winning Syrian civil war will result into lots of sectarian violence in Syria and countries around it, and will result into millions of displaced Christians (no wonder most Christians still in Syria are fighting for Assad...)

Things where I "failed" was mostly underestimating time to something happen (I 5 years ago, I believed Brazil would take 10 years to have birth rates below replacement... That happened recently, thus 100% faster than I belived).

And I never predicted the rise of Anonymous, or the NSA whistleblowers in the US, I expected it would take some more 20 years to people figure stuff like Prism was not crazy people delusions.

Also I underestimated the scope and length of Brazillian protests, I expected them, because other bus fare increases sparked protests, and when the crackdown happened, and protests got bigger, this was not news either, what was news is that the protests remained for more than 10 days, people in other countries protested, and people in Brazil north protested strongly too (usually those are very detached of anything that happen in Brazil south).

Of course, this leads to a fourth type of possible failure: stuff that happens and force me to throw away previous predictions, and this is strongly the case with Brazil, the protests are quickly changing the political landscape, opening several options while closing others... For example before the protests the chance for a military coup was almost 0%, now it is not so, because there is popular support, and members of the military (including a general) voiced they DO wish to get rid of the current government (or "un-government" as the general wrote on his public letter) Also before the protests I was almost 100% sure Dilma Rouseff would be reelected, now people are even talking about banning reelections completely.




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