Forecasts and Modern Primitivism (Column 88)
With God's help
In the previous column I discussed the problematic nature of drawing conclusions after the fact. I dealt with the problem of "hindsight wisdom" as opposed to claims about "the writing that was already on the wall." I ended that column with a few questions: Is it possible at all to predict the future, and if so, when? How can one test a prediction: does what actually happens necessarily refute or confirm it? Here I will try to touch a bit on these painful questions.
On Oracles and the Law of Small Numbers
Since time immemorial people have tried to predict the future. Each of us does this at every turn. We try to predict what a given person will do or say in a given situation, how he will react to what is said or done to him, and so on. It is obvious to all of us that such a prediction can fail. It is an assessment that results from accumulated experience and from the processing and analysis we perform on it in an attempt to draw conclusions. Therefore, despite our natural expectation that predictions will come true, we must be prepared for surprises. But that readiness does not prevent, and should not prevent, us from making predictions. Why? Because even an uncertain prediction has value. If we predict that something will happen with an 80% probability, that too is something, is it not? As we saw in the previous column, every prediction can fail, but that does not mean predictions have no value.
So uncertainty is built into our predictions. Ben-Gurion already said that experts are experts in what has been, not in what will be. Perhaps that is the reason for the appearance of mystical prediction. Various oracles (such as the oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece, among many others) operated throughout the ancient world, and in some places down to our own day. Prophets too are accepted as seers of the future, and sometimes various mystics as well (for a modest sum they will predict your future from coffee grounds, the stars, or simply from waking hallucinations). There are also nonhuman creatures that engage in prediction (they usually do not know that they are doing so). Thus, for example, Paul the Octopus, who lived for about two years, managed to correctly predict the outcomes of 12 out of 14 football matches (mainly of the German national team), and thanks to these abilities the poor creature was rewarded by being held captive against his will for most of his short life.
What distinguishes mystical oracles is the pretension to certain and perfect prediction. They rely on obscure and hidden knowledge from one exalted source or another, thereby bypassing the limits of ordinary human prediction. How do they do it? In most cases the explanation is quite simple: issue a prediction vague enough, and you will always be right. To Paul the Octopus's credit, his predictions were unambiguous: either Germany wins or it does not. Such a prediction is very easy to test empirically: either it came true or it did not. Mystical oracles, by contrast, tend to produce forecasts phrased in such a way that no one can really draw an unambiguous conclusion from them, and therefore they are not truly open to empirical refutation. They may say something like "In the near future your condition will improve wondrously," or "Something interesting will happen to you," and the like. Who knows what counts as the near future, what is called a wondrous improvement or an interesting event, and whether, when an improvement or an interesting incident does in fact occur, it is not just a lucky coincidence rather than a genuine prediction. This is the principle of predictive uncertainty: the ratio between the breadth of the prediction (its vagueness) and the probability that it will come true is constant. The broader the prediction, the greater the chance that it will come true (or at least not be refuted). If you predict that the world will still exist tomorrow morning, that is a fairly broad prediction, and therefore its probability is high. If you predict tomorrow morning's weather, that is a narrower and more specific prediction, and therefore the chances of success are lower. If you predict that the next person I see will be over one meter tall, you will probably be right. If you predict that he will be fairly tall, you still probably will not be refuted. But if you say he will be 1.83 meters tall, your chances are rather slim.
The Failures of Mystical Prediction
For the failures of reasoning and the statistical errors that help forecasters of this sort "succeed" (mainly in making a public impression), see Column 38, where I discussed the law of small numbers and alternative medicine. There is therefore no need to expand on that matter again here.
Still, I cannot restrain myself, and I will bring another example. I was reminded just now of the wondrous predictions of Nir Ben Artzi. A friend once told me—he is a rabbi and I regard him as an intelligent man—that he tends to believe in Ben Artzi's powers, since the facts speak for themselves. True, it is not clear to him how he does it—but one cannot argue with facts. The fact is that he predicts precise future events and knows things without having any way of obtaining the information by ordinary means. Well then. A few days later I saw in the tabloid that the aforesaid distributed to synagogues a gloomy forecast about Assad. Ben Artzi said there, with great certainty, that within three months Assad's career would be over. I chuckled to myself, since it was clear to everyone that his end was near, and I understood that even if it happened within two months or four months, this prediction was not taking much of a risk. Today, some six years later, we can all see that Assad will apparently outlive us all.
True, this too is only one example, and as noted the law of small numbers teaches us that one cannot learn from it. But it seems to me that it illustrates the failure. If you produce enough predictions, preferably vague enough ones, you will turn out to be right in some of them, and just like that you become Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Moreover, mystical prediction is supposed to work infallibly, not merely statistically. Therefore even small numbers carry some weight here. If you have supernatural information about the future, it is reasonable to expect that you will know it completely and with certainty. Statistical forecasting is a matter for rational methods that rely not on future information but on logical conclusions drawn from present information.
Modern Prediction
In our time, primitive and ancient mystical prediction has advanced into prediction by systematic techniques. There are research institutions that engage in prediction by various techniques, and some would call them scientific. Every government maintains assessment and forecasting bodies whose role is to examine the expected reactions of its neighbors, its enemies, its own citizens, and more. Every decision-maker is supposed to make use of prediction in one way or another as an aid to decision-making. These forecasting bodies may belong to intelligence organizations (the Shin Bet, the Mossad, Military Intelligence), to political and state organizations, to academic and private research institutes, and even journalists are constantly engaged in assessments and forecasts.
On the Problem Itself
As noted, this is no longer mysticism but science, or at least rational and systematic thinking. Can we see that they really work? Or at least that they are more reliable than their mystical colleagues?
It is important to understand that these predictions usually concern major events and phenomena, such as whether State X will go to war, or whether it will respond to some action of ours by recalling its ambassador, with protest, sanctions, and the like. Such predictions, by their very nature, concern a single case, and therefore it is very hard to give a reliable prediction and equally hard to test them statistically. Even if someone predicted that a war would break out and it did not, or the reverse happened (as in the Yom Kippur "failure"), that may be only chance. One case is not a basis for prediction, nor does it allow the prediction to be tested.
One can of course try to examine a collection of predictions by some institution or person and see whether they work or not, but every prediction is built on a different basis and concerns a different factor, and therefore it is very hard to regard such a test as a reliable probabilistic measure of the quality of our forecaster. Beyond that, in most cases the forecasts are not given in unambiguous terms (unlike Paul the Octopus), which makes these predictions even harder to test.
The way to test the quality of such a forecasting body is not simple. Suppose some journalist gives us forecasts of football results, or an assessment unit of Military Intelligence gives us 10 forecasts a year on various subjects, and suppose even that the forecasts are unambiguous (1 or 0, like Paul the Octopus or football). If 6 of them materialize, is that good predictive quality or not? How does one even answer such a question? If the questions are not binary, then it is very difficult to propose measures of success or failure even for a single prediction.
So How Does One Test Them Anyway?
If the questions are binary (as with Paul the Octopus), one can compare the number of successful predictions to random guessing, which will of course also give us 50% success. That is, a forecasting rate of 50% on binary and unambiguous questions is worth nothing. But that is only a lower bound, and it does not say much. It only tells us that if a certain person correctly predicts the outcomes of 100 football matches out of two hundred, his forecasting is worth nothing!!! Note that he nevertheless succeeded in a hundred cases, and that will of course lead many people to trust his abilities (especially if he does not reveal the cases in which he failed). But they do not notice that the comparison should not be to a failed prediction in which there was no success at all, but to an arbitrary prediction rate of 50%. Therefore, the quality of an institution or factor engaged in binary prediction is measured by its successes above 50% (and even that assumes that the number of cases examined is sufficiently significant. Predicting 2 results out of 3 is significantly above 50%, yet it still does not tell us much).
What about prediction by nonprofessionals, laypeople? These, unlike blind random guessing, use information, but their skill in analysis and their familiarity with the full range of relevant facts are less than those of the experts. In many cases they will arrive at predictive qualities better than 50%, since their prediction is not just a shot in the dark but makes use of information. Thus, for example, even without being a football genius, if there were a contest between Germany and Israel every layperson would predict a German victory (forgive the lack of patriotism), and he would probably be right in the overwhelming majority of cases.
Therefore, tests intended to examine the expertise of some forecasting agent should not compare him to the 50% benchmark but to the forecasts of laypeople. If every layperson knows how to predict the outcome of a football match with 60% probability, then a sports journalist ought to give us a forecast of 70%. If he succeeded at 60%, then he may be better than blind and arbitrary guessing, but no better than any layperson on the street. In such a situation one cannot call him an expert.
Conclusions: Prediction in General, and Scientific Prediction in Particular
The conclusions called for by what we have seen are rather bleak. I do not know whether anyone has ever checked the forecasts of sports writers (relatively easy to check) against laypeople. I assume the forecasts of security or political assessment bodies have not really been tested, since it is very difficult to do so. There are not enough cases, there are almost no unambiguous questions (certainly not binary ones) that can be systematically examined, and the matters are often secret. And yet I have rather pessimistic expectations as to the results of such tests, if they were to be carried out. Serious doubts arise in me as to how much weight can really be assigned to expertise in these areas.
As noted, the field of systematic forecasting has been developing over the past few decades as an academic discipline, and some relate to it as scientific (quite undeservedly, in my opinion). One of the best-known experts in the field, David Passig (described as the first in Israel to hold a doctoral degree in this field—to our credit, it was awarded abroad), currently serves as a lecturer at Bar-Ilan.
In 2005 the field scarcely existed here, and one of my friends sent me an article by Passig (I looked again now and found it here) that predicted a brilliant future for Israel. He was wildly enthusiastic and asked what I thought. I read it and did not know whether to laugh or cry. It is a collection of completely vague statements that there is no way to test. Any layperson could have produced similar statements that were no less good. You cannot extract from it a single claim that can really be tested. The excuses, of course, are always available, since it depends on countless things that are unknown, one cannot know everything with certainty, and there are always mistakes. Of course—but I know that too. Forecasting as an academic field purports to do something beyond that. Above I set out the criteria against lay predictions or the 50% benchmark, and in particular the requirement to formulate claims that are at all testable, that is, claims that say something. The passage in the article that glorifies the field and treats it as a kind of science is also, in my opinion, utter nonsense. There is learned verbiage there that uses concepts it is evident the author himself does not really understand (for example, toward the end, from the field of physics); it impresses laypeople and provokes laughter in anyone with even a slight acquaintance with scientific thinking. I sent my friend a devastating critique of the piece, and since then my attitude toward this field has been extremely skeptical.
I now looked for more up-to-date material and found, for example, this interview (from 2012), in which Passig is asked about just everything under the sun. There is no field on which he does not offer a firm opinion, and usually these are statements devoid of any concrete content. Among other things, he is asked about the attitude received by those who engage in forecasting, and he explains that it usually consists of disdain and cynicism, but he adds calmly that they are used to it. It is a new field, he says, and Israelis too will have to get used to it. Well, as one of the scoffers, I suggest that my readers read the predictions in this article (especially those dealing with the second decade of this century, which has by now almost passed and was already well underway when these things were written, so we are not speaking about predictions of the distant future) and examine which of them can be empirically tested (are open to refutation), and among those, what actually came true. The achievements are most impressive: even the vaguest statements, where it is hard to see how they could even be tested, manage there to fail spectacularly and shatter against the stubborn rock of our world's reality. This, as noted, despite the fact that these predictions concern the current decade, and were given when it was already here (2012).
I will say again: I have no criticism of the failures, for that would be hindsight wisdom. I am not sure I would have done better (though I am almost sure I would). But I do have criticism of the pretension. I do not receive degrees and salary for predictions, and so naturally no one expects me to succeed at them. One must remember that the essence of prediction is to anticipate hindsight and see the writing on the wall already now. To be wise after the fact from the outset. If you do not know how to do that—do not be a forecaster. Bottom line, I do not see even the faintest difference between what is being done here and the pronouncements of the oracle of Delphi. It seems to me that the forecasts given in this interview, which are very careful to say almost nothing meaningful, do not even meet the 50% test (that is, he manages to be worse than random guessing, though most of the matters are not binary, as noted). Truly pitiful. It awakened in me a longing for Paul the Octopus, of blessed memory (who, as recalled, succeeded in 12 out of 14 cases). It appears that these are modern sorcerers who fare no better than their ancient counterparts. Those wear robes and these wear robes, and the only difference between them is salary and an academic degree. In my impression, "scientific" forecasting is nothing but ancient demons in new dress, nothing more. This is basically sorcery in its most charlatanistic and worst sense. But, as noted, the burden of proof is on them. By all means, let them present systematic tests of their predictive quality against laypeople on questions that can be measured and quantified, and we shall see.
What Is the Difference Between Prediction and Economic Knowledge?
It is important to clarify something here. Economists are constantly engaged in forecasting, and in my impression, despite the criticism of their various failures, they do better than laypeople. Economic knowledge makes a clear contribution to the ability to understand processes and predict the future with some degree of reliability (higher than that of laypeople). What added value do forecasting methods have, as distinct from economics? Someone who engages in forecasting is supposed to know how to take the data available to the economist and be able to predict the future from them better than the economist can. Systematic forecasting is not economic knowledge. That belongs to the economist. A forecaster is supposed to have the ability to choose the relevant data, and also to carry out the predictive inference better than the economist. This does not happen. Economists, in fact, do better, which shows that correct prediction is a matter of common sense and scientific, factual, professional knowledge (economic and otherwise), and that the added value of forecasting methods is apparently negligible. In truth, there is no such field. There is economics and economic knowledge, but forecasting is nothing beyond the application of common sense to economic knowledge.
A Note: Rankings as Predictions
There is a fascinating phenomenon that appears in popular competitive games around the world, such as Go or chess. In these fields there is a ranking of the players, and I have understood from friends of mine who are involved in Go that the ranking there has an extraordinarily fine resolution. They also told me that, astonishingly, this ranking yields remarkably precise predictions. Someone ranked just a bit higher than someone else will always beat him, almost without exception. And do not take this lightly. The differences are quite small, and a layperson would not be able to give predictions of game results at such a level. I do not know whether this has been studied, how this ranking is produced, or what can be learned from it about prediction, but in my opinion it is certainly worth some thought.
Prophecies and Prophetic Abilities
What has been written here raises somber questions about the prophets. Forgive the heresy, but I would like to be able to test systematically the quality of their predictions in order to be convinced that they indeed possessed abilities that we do not. There are examples here and there, but the prophecies are so vague that it would be hard to determine that they failed. Beyond that, they need to be tested against the predictions of laypeople and against the 50% rule. I am not aware of any systematic study of these predictions, and here too we usually operate according to the law of small numbers: successful examples, and excuses for the examples that failed.
Does that mean our prophets were not endowed with prophetic abilities? Not necessarily. It only means that I have no clear indication that they had such abilities. The Torah says they did, and therefore I tend to believe it. But the proofs adduced from the fulfillment of prophecies have always seemed dubious to me (see here).[1]
A Note on Modern "Primitivism"
We have seen here that the human need to cope with uncertainty created the oracles and the mystical forecasters. We have also seen that this need has not really disappeared. In our time it is still with us, and it is what leads us to resort to modern sorcerers. Modern forecasting replaces mystical forecasting, but does so with a quality and reliability that are probably not much better. Apparently the need for certainty that leads some people to resort to holy men and sorcerers leads others (who regard the former as primitive) to rely on academic forecasters. As we have seen, these wear robes and those wear robes, and the only difference between them is salary and an academic degree.
There are several other primitive phenomena that have ostensibly disappeared but in fact have merely changed form. My sense is that fears of technology (such as cloning, artificial intelligence, and the like) are also essentially replacing other primordial fears. Instead of speaking today about demons, people speak about thinking machines, but attribute to them, for no fault of their own, fictional properties and abilities, and thus develop baseless and groundless fears of them (see, for example, here). The same is true of cloning, which is perceived as a severe moral problem and discussed with deep religious pathos, when in fact it is merely a technology that, in my view, raises no special problem whatsoever (see here and especially here). This is another example of religious feelings that have undergone secularization and changed their form (as though we are "playing on God's turf." Even complete atheists use such language).
There is apparently something fairly constant and persistent in human psychology, and the great changes in consciousness and culture that humanity undergoes do not really manage to get rid of it. It merely sheds and dons different forms as the cultural and social circumstances change.
[1] Add to this the words of the Shelah in the introduction to his book, in the Beit HaBechirah section, where he explains that a prophet usually prophesies what ought to happen according to the probable course of events, but his prophecy can fail if people choose differently. This empties the concept of prophecy of its mystical content, and in effect turns the prophet into something almost like a modern forecaster (only more successful, I hope). The words of the Shelah here require discussion, and the question whether he is speaking about all prophecies (that is, whether he completely empties prophecy of its mystical content) or only about certain kinds, but this is not the place.
Discussion
I would like to know what reasonable conclusion we are supposed to draw if it turns out that the prophets’ abilities are not convincing.
In other words: so what if they did not really know the future?
Regarding the prophecies of the prophets, something I once heard from Professor Oded Lipschits of Tel Aviv University. Jeremiah prophesies about Jehoiakim: “He shall be buried with the burial of a donkey, dragged and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem.” But the Book of Kings says that he “lay with his fathers.” From here, Jeremiah was mistaken. Here one cannot say that he repented.
Hello Phil.
1. I did address this in my remarks. And indeed, as you wrote, the greater the number of successful forecasts, the greater the reliability that can be attributed to the forecasting source. So I didn’t see anything new here.
2. I distinguished between experts in a particular field and experts in forecasting. Economists are experts in a field, and among other things they provide forecasts. They are not experts in forecasting. My main claim is against forecasting as a discipline, not against forecasts in general.
I am willing to accept what you say regarding economists, and that is exactly what I wrote (so I don’t understand what your comment was if you agree). The question is how to relate to forecasting experts. About that I expressed considerable doubt.
Beyond that, I am willing to accept reasonable hypotheses on the basis of analogies or on any other basis, but if the facts contradict them then they should be rejected. If forecasting tests produce results like those of laymen, then you should throw your analogies in the trash.
In principle one could say that there was another Jehoiakim, or that this is a different tradition about what happened to him. But why can’t one say that he repented? One could also say that he was given a donkey’s burial and afterward was buried with his fathers. The gates of interpretation have not been locked.
I didn’t understand the question. If the prophets did not know the future, then they are not prophets (except in the sense of the Shelah that was brought in the note).
With God’s help, 9 Elul 5777
To Elchanan – greetings,
It should be announced to the professor from “the exile of Tel Aviv which is on the river Chebar” (Til Abubi in Akkadian: “Mound of Ruin”) that the Lord has remembered His people, as Jeremiah prophesied (in chapter 31): “Thus says the Lord: The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness, when Israel went to find rest… Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel; again you shall adorn yourself with your timbrels and go forth in the dances of the merrymakers; again you shall plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria; the planters shall plant and shall enjoy the fruit… Behold, I will bring them from the land of the north and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, the pregnant woman and she who is in labor together; a great company shall return here…”
The wondrous ingathering of the exiles is from all ends of the earth, as Jeremiah says (chapter 16:14–15): “Therefore, behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when it shall no longer be said, ‘As the Lord lives who brought the children of Israel up out of the land of Egypt,’ but rather, ‘As the Lord lives who brought the children of Israel up out of the land of the north and out of all the lands where He had driven them’; and I will bring them back to their land that I gave to their fathers.”
And to the professor from the mound of ruin on the river Chebar let there be a call to come to the flourishing and well-kept city of “Tel Aviv” on the Yarkon River, and to Jerusalem built as a city joined together, and to fulfill: “And they shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, and shall stream to the goodness of the Lord, for grain and for wine and for oil, and for the young of the flock and the herd; and their soul shall be like a watered garden, and they shall not sorrow anymore at all” (31:11).
Regards, S. Z. Levinger
And regarding Jehoiakim, concerning whom it was decreed: “They shall not lament for him, saying, ‘Ah, my brother!’ or ‘Ah, sister!’ They shall not lament for him, saying, ‘Ah, lord!’ or ‘Ah, his glory!’ He shall be buried with the burial of a donkey, dragged and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem” (22:18–19) – this indeed was fulfilled as written, in II Chronicles 36:6: “Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up against him and bound him in bronze fetters to take him to Babylon.” Jehoiakim was bound in order to take him to Babylon, but it is not mentioned that he got there, unlike the “vessels of the house of the Lord” in the next verse, concerning which it says: “And of the vessels of the house of the Lord Nebuchadnezzar brought to Babylon and put them in his temple in Babylon.” What happened to Jehoiakim? Apparently that is what the next verse hints at: “Now the rest of the acts of Jehoiakim, and his abominations which he did, and that which was found against him, behold, they are written…” It hints but does not explain what “was found against him”…
There is no statement in the Book of Kings that Jehoiakim was buried in Jerusalem. “And he lay with his fathers” means everywhere “and he died,” not “and he was buried.” So with David: “And David lay with his fathers and was buried in the city of David.” But David’s fathers are buried in Bethlehem, are they not? Likewise, regarding Manasseh it is said: “And Manasseh lay with his fathers and was buried in the garden of his house, in the garden of Uzza” (II Kings 21:18). The last of the kings of Judah who merited “to be buried in his tomb” was Josiah, to whom Huldah the prophetess promised: “Because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before the Lord… therefore behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace…” (II Kings 22:19–20). And even though he sinned by not listening to Pharaoh Neco and was killed in battle, Josiah merited burial in Jerusalem (ibid. 23:30).
Paragraph 1, line 3:
… again you shall plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria…
Of course the gates of interpretation have not been locked; the midrash already noticed the gap in the story and filled it in on its own, about his being buried in a donkey’s hide, and other midrashim. And to the dear S. Z. Levinger: in the Babylonian Chronicles and in Chronicles it says that Jehoiakim was taken to Babylon, which also does not fit the plain sense of the prophecy “He shall be buried with the burial of a donkey, dragged and cast beyond the gates of Jerusalem,” which speaks of something like death in battle and being shamefully thrown out in the field.
Regarding the prophets.
As I understand it, they are not connected to the article at all. Assuming they hear the word of God, I need to listen to them whether they are right or not. And also in terms of trusting them: just as I believe my parents without examining whether they are right or not, simply because I believe them, so too when I am convinced that the prophet is a “great” person I will believe him in any case, even if he errs again and again; this has nothing to do with science and not with proofs.
The problem is that Maimonides does connect them, and writes that the way to test them is by the results, and that really does make us ask whether the test of outcome says anything. According to the rabbi’s remarks here, in this case really not, because Maimonides is satisfied with three times.
One should be precise!
In Chronicles it says “and he bound him in bronze fetters to go to Babylon,” and unlike the vessels of the House of the Lord, about which it is explicitly said that they were brought to Nebuchadnezzar’s temple, the absence of such a statement about Jehoiakim himself is conspicuous. Instead we hear an obscure expression, “and that which was found against him,” which clearly implies that the chronicler does not want to spell out what “was found against him,” and clearly it was difficult for him to spell out that a king of the house of David died on the way and was buried in a field,
As for the Babylonian Chronicles, “Let us bring the book and see.” How long after the event were they written, and how accurate are they, and is it explicitly stated there at all that he arrived in Babylon? In any case, even if he reached Babylon and was thrown, as was customary, into prison, it may be assumed that he did not merit an honorable royal burial, if any at all..,
Regards, S. Z. Levinger
By the way, it seems to me that the expression “and he lay with his fathers” is not said about kings who were utterly wicked, and it is possible that even Jehoiakim, while being led to Babylon in bronze fetters, did some measure of repentance, which allowed his death to be defined as “lying with his fathers,” but did not help him escape the punishment of a disgraceful burial.
The Babylonian Chronicle (brought in Wikipedia, entry “Jehoiakim”) says:
“In the seventh year, in the month of Kislev, the king of Akkad mustered his army and marched to the land of Hatti. He encamped against the city of Judah, and on the second day of the month of Adar he captured the city, seized the king. He appointed therein a king of his own choice. He took heavy tribute and brought it to Babylon.”
The chronicle sounds contemporary, and in it Jehoiachin is still considered “a king of his own choice,” but even from it it is not clear whether the king who was seized actually reached Babylon, or whether “and brought it to Babylon” refers only to the immediately preceding phrase “he took heavy tribute and brought it to Babylon.”
In short: even if Jehoiakim reached Babylon and was imprisoned there, he did not merit an honorable burial, but from the wording of both Chronicles and the Babylonian Chronicle, the possibility clearly arises that the captive king did not reach Babylon. At least we have a yahrzeit for his capture, the 2nd of Adar.
Regards, S. Z. Levinger
What goes through your mind during the blessing of God’s might in the area of the resurrection of the dead?
Regarding economic forecasting, there is a puzzling and well-known fact in the investment world that the average performance of investment managers does not differ from the market average. Although there are investment managers who succeed in beating the index consistently (like Warren Buffett, for example). Perhaps the fact can be explained by what Ben-Gurion said: that experts are experts in what has been, not in what will be.
Mordechai said exactly what we were saying
If a person hears the word of God, it is not reasonable that he should err so many times
To Rabbi Michael Abraham, greetings,
Regarding the prophets – do the predictions of the ten plagues not seem clear-cut to you? If you accept what is told in the Torah, then there are clear descriptions of the plague of blood, frogs, etc., before they appeared.
I am really not sure that economists have better forecasts. That is an interesting question.
I always wonder whether Buffett and the like are in a reasonable place within the distribution. If there is really no way to forecast the future of investments, it is clear that there will be random differences between different investors. Since there are many investors in the world, there should also be some who succeed relatively consistently. The question is whether Buffett and his peers are just at the tail end of the distribution, or whether they are beyond the tail, in which case one can conclude that they are really good at forecasting.
(There was no place to comment above)
What I meant to ask was this: after all, your well-known view is that we do not know the true meaning of the prophecies handed down to us (what the prophets really meant), so their fulfillment is not to be expected (since we can never say of any event that it is what was promised in the prophecy). If so, what difference does it make to us whether they knew the future or not? Or in your terms: whether they were prophets or not?
Does belief that Moses received the Torah from God depend on this?
Investment forecasting is something else. I am talking about broader economic forecasting. My impression is that economists do this not badly over the short term. Certainly better than laymen. But I don’t know whether this has been tested (which is why I wrote that this is an impression). After all, one cannot say that knowledge carries no weight. Someone who does not know what inflation is, or interest, or macroeconomics בכלל, obviously will not be able to forecast anything.
Yishai,
Nassim Taleb built his entire book The Black Swan on that very argument, so look into it.
Jeremiah too foretold the exile and also the return from it. But that is a forecast where both it and its fulfillment appear only in Scripture. I am talking about long-range forecasts that can be directly tested.
Indeed. And therefore I wrote that it really does not depend on this.
Yishai,
It seems to me that to say Buffett falls within the statistical distribution is like saying that if someone’s die comes up only 6 for 100 throws, then it is a fair die and it just came out that way by luck (when there are only another 100 players next to him). More than that, according to your approach, after they identified Buffett as one of a few uniquely gifted people who beat the market consistently (say the first identification was in the 1980s), the chance that from then on he would continue to beat the market is very low (relative to the sample space he comes from, which is a few uniquely gifted people).
Oren
I don’t have an approach. I’m asking. I have never checked the data. If the chance of a monkey making returns like Buffett’s is really one-sixth to the minus hundredth power, then of course I will assume that it isn’t by chance. If the chance that an investor will achieve such returns over his time span is, say, one in a million (which sounds like a small probability), then I have no reason to assume it isn’t chance (of course one has to check how many people like him there are and what the probability is that there would be such people, and if the group is too large then one can assume there are experts even if sometimes there are just lucky people). The question of when they identified his success doesn’t matter for this issue, only the overall probability does.
I didn’t understand the question. First, the siman in Ketzot that I am dealing with right now. And when it comes out, then also the explanation of the words.
A test of three times on a question is good enough (even when there are three possible answers) to be a pretty good indication.
Beyond that, the test of the prophet is what determines whether he really hears the word of God or is a false prophet.
And third, the discussion was about his being a prophet irrespective of the question whether there is an obligation to listen to him. One who does not foresee the future is not a prophet.
I received by email a response from a friend who served in a framework dealing with intelligence assessments. This is what he wrote:
By the way, I read your latest column on the blog. You referred to the predictive ability of the intelligence world. As someone whose role was exactly that, I have to tell you that you are absolutely right. Even though I did not do an orderly study, the quantities of failed predictions were enormous (and no one was court-martialed, unlike a combat soldier who fails!). The very fact that they did not check at all what our prediction rates were shows that there is something problematic here.
Besides that, as you said, the overwhelming majority of the documents and forecasts, especially on political matters, were completely vague and devoid of meaning. Someone once formalized part of the documents and by doing so exposed that the forecasts in many of them were simply tautologies (following that, his commander asked me to stop formalizing!).
I suggested to the commander of my section that we start betting money on predictions so that at least we would care about what we were saying and would have motivation to succeed, but she did not view that favorably. And in general, the research of 18-year-old kids, who have no prior knowledge, on very complex matters is simply ridiculous (though it is not certain that knowledge can help). In any event, I have quite a few stories on the subject, but not for email.
Indeed, I had omitted the effect of tautologies.
A prophet who wants his prophecies to come true will be careful to predict tautologies, such as: if the army is sufficiently strong and prepared then we will win the war (where “sufficiently strong and prepared” will of course turn out to be the case if we win). Alternatively, see the pessimistic and optimistic scenario of Pasig in the link brought in my post (give two possible scenarios, each of which covers one of the two possibilities, and you thereby become a certified prophet).
Does Maimonides explicitly write that the test is three times? As I recall, the wording is: “time after time,” and *some have interpreted* that as three times.
By the way, what is interesting in halakhah regarding a prophet, and is directly connected to what was said in the article, is this: a prophet, even after it has been *proven* that he is a prophet, if he errs – even once – is thereby a false prophet!
I have an idea (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) for explaining the expertise of these “experts”:
One simply has to take into account that (unlike random choice) the data may not only fail to help, but may actually interfere and create a false appearance that causes errors at rates higher than random.
[There is such a thing in the psychometric exam, where those who do not have enough time left to think through all the answers are advised to choose answers randomly rather than think quickly, since shallow thinking can sometimes lead to more errors than randomness].
If so, their expertise is expressed in ruining randomness as little as possible…
The question is whether in the bottom line they forecast better than a layman or not. At most you are claiming that they should not be measured against 50%. By the way, it is still correct to measure them against 50%, because at the end of the day what interests us is the quality of the forecast. And if flipping a coin does it better, then there is no point in keeping them, even if they have wonderful excuses for their lack of success.
With God’s help, 10 Elul 5777
To RMDA – greetings,
They say in the name of the Hazon Ish that one should consult the greatest expert in every field because “the greatest expert knows a little.” When a person has much knowledge and experience, he is not immune to error, but certainly his situation is far better than that of one who goes like “a blind man in a window.” And the more knowledge and experience the expert has, the more he knows just how much his knowledge is only “a little,” and if he is a truthful person and not arrogant and puffed up, the more the expert will increase in caution and in checking his initial conclusion, and the greater the chance that he will hit upon the truth.
Regards, S. Z. Levinger
SZL
Tell me honestly, do you read what you’re responding to?
Sometimes (like now) it seems like you’re a very successful artificial intelligence program that still hasn’t passed the Turing test.
Indeed I would recommend the test of Two Rings, two rings that are a parable for our accepting “we will do” and “we will hear.”
And just as Frodo in the genizah had one ring, we must wear two.
And examine ourselves whether we are invisible
or whether we accept the Torah like robots
with one ring of “we will do,”
and afterward we will merit to receive that of “we will hear,”
and thus everything will work out without unnecessary questions
in the coming of our righteous Messiah.
Regards,
Shmuel Tsapack Mechanical Winger
SZL,
I agree in principle. But the question I raised is whether there really is expertise in forecasting (as distinct from economic expertise, for example). I tend to think not, and I suggested that it would be worthwhile to conduct an empirical test of the realization of forecasts in order to put my hypothesis to the test.
Every expert who makes decisions in his field operates in a state of uncertainty, and nevertheless he must decide which scenario is more likely, and then he decides: the doctor whether to operate or not, the soldier whether to go into battle or not, and the lawyer whether to file an appeal or not.
Every decision whether to carry out an action or not – depends on an expectation that matters will develop in a certain direction, and obviously the more knowledge and experience a person has – the greater the chance that what he says about the likelihood of success will come true. Does this need to be measured?
And in any case, even if we measure and do not find a significant advantage in the expert’s forecast – will we stop seeking the expert’s advice and begin deciding without judgment, like “a blind man in a window”? So the whole discussion seems to me unnecessary from the outset and devoid of practical significance.
Regards, S. Z. Levinger
SZL
Suppose we measure and discover that a coin makes better decisions about whether to operate than a doctor does – would you still prefer a doctor?!
And if the results are equal, why prefer a doctor? Isn’t that a waste of time?
In medicine specifically there is much more statistics that doctors can use (and still many of them refuse to, unfortunately), but there are fields where this is not the case. In other fields, expert assessment is complete guesswork, and if we prove that a coin guesses better or the same, that means their expertise does not help.
By the way, that does not mean experts are unnecessary. In betting on when there will be a war with Iran they are probably worthless, but the fact that we ask whether there will be a war with Iran and do not ask whether there will be a war with Saudi Arabia is based on knowledge. That knowledge today also exists among laymen, but someone had to take an interest in what is happening in Arab countries in order to know that. Maybe a Middle East specialist would explain to me that there actually is a possibility of war with Saudi Arabia for reasons I do not know. That is to say, they succeed at least in identifying things that are completely implausible (of course even there there are surprises, but here it is clear that if we toss a coin about the probability of war breaking out between any two countries in the world in the coming year, and let an international-relations expert assess it, he will do better than the coin; the fact that a layman would also do better than the coin is also connected to knowledge conveyed to him through the experts. Admittedly, here I assume the expert would do better because he at least knows which countries are neighbors and what the relations between them are, unlike a layman who knows far fewer countries and does not really know the state of relations between Suriname and Guyana).
Of course. If the expert does not systematically succeed, then we will still go to him so as not to be like a blind man in a window. That is simple logic. How did I not think of it myself?! There is also the option of consulting the dead, going to a shaman, or a coffee-reader. After all, the alternative is to be like a blind man in a window…
“Nu, so. A few days later, I saw in the tabloid put out by the aforesaid (about Ben Artzi) [you are great, Michal Avraham, may he live long, from Lithuania, from the elite, if but-lita]
and Igrot Kodesh (who’s this coming? the Messiah, may his lamp shine, zoklllllllll)
and Pasig the seer from Lubrailon
and all those gaping (Baal Peor) and worshipping (Merculis) trees and counsels (so many counsels that you can’t see the target) and stones (including the reserve stones, crying out from the wall) and cherubs (those two above the ark, from innermost sanctum to innermost sanctum the High Priest came out from there and did not merit that they raise him up (an ignoramus who precedes him, a mamzer who is a Torah scholar)
and the dreamers and seers (with all the clauses and “whereases”)
I saw a dream, and it made me afraid; and thoughts upon my bed and the visions of my head terrified me.
The visions of my dream that I saw, and its interpretation,
“And with bad forecasting – a people is punished”
(And see: Tractate Avodah Zarah)
And to all the followers of Michal Avraham, do not “sojourn” – do not turn him into a guru.
(By the way, what is keeping you from doing/finishing a doctorate? Turn to “the Academic Savior” and Israel shall be saved by the Lord (ld1.hamoshia.co.il 0544678152).
Even so (many thanks to the gentleman) I foresee for him more Torah wars on all fronts
and that is enough for the understanding.
“Nu, so. A few days later, I saw in the tabloid put out by the aforesaid (about Ben Artzi) [you are great, Michal Avraham, may he live long, from Lithuania, from the elite, if but-lita]
and Igrot Kodesh (who’s this coming? the Messiah, may his lamp shine, zoklllllllll)
and Pasig the seer from Lubrailon
and all those gaping (Baal Peor) and worshipping (Merculis) trees and counsels (so many counsels that you can’t see the target) and stones (including the reserve stones, crying out from the wall) and cherubs (those two above the ark, from innermost sanctum to innermost sanctum the High Priest came out from there and did not merit that they raise him up (an ignoramus who precedes him, a mamzer who is a Torah scholar)
and the dreamers and seers (with all the clauses and “whereases”)
I saw a dream, and it made me afraid; and thoughts upon my bed and the visions of my head terrified me.
The visions of my dream that I saw, and its interpretation,
“And with bad forecasting – a people is punished”
(And see: Tractate Avodah Zarah)
And to all the followers of Michal Avraham, do not “sojourn” – do not turn him into a guru.
(By the way, what is keeping you from doing/finishing a doctorate? Turn to “the Academic Savior” and Israel shall be saved by the Lord (ld1.hamoshia.co.il 0544678152).
Even so (many thanks to the gentleman) I foresee for him more Torah wars on all fronts
and that is enough for the understanding.
Regarding the fulfillment of prophecies – see the Gemara at the end of Moed Katan, which with great difficulty reconciles the good prophecies that were prophesied to Zedekiah and Josiah.
There are forecasts that are made on the basis of prior knowledge and its mathematical analysis.
If I want to predict what electricity consumption in Israel will be tomorrow, knowledge of the Israeli electricity market is certainly not enough. I need to analyze the historical data, try to look for relevant parameters, and infer from the historical data a function that will let me predict, given the parameters regarding the future (is it a holiday, what is the weather forecast, etc.), the consumption.
So mathematical knowledge is definitely very important for predictions of this kind, and perhaps for any prediction.
Predictions given by such methods are often very accurate, and here common sense is really not enough.
Such predictions are also fairly easy to test; there are also testing methods that divide the historical data into two parts, use the first part to produce the parameters for the forecast, and the second part to test the level of the forecast’s accuracy.
Regarding the prophets, what would you say about what is said in I Kings, chapter 13:
(1) “And behold, a man of God came from Judah by the word of the Lord to Bethel; and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense. (2) And he cried against the altar by the word of the Lord, and said: ‘O altar, altar, thus says the Lord: Behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name, and upon you he shall sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense upon you, and human bones shall be burned upon you.’ (3) And he gave a sign that same day, saying: ‘This is the sign which the Lord has spoken: behold, the altar shall be torn apart, and the ashes that are upon it shall be poured out.’”
And its fulfillment in II Kings, chapter 23:
(15) “Moreover the altar that was at Bethel, the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel sin, had made—even that altar and the high place he broke down; and he burned the high place, crushed it to dust, and burned the Asherah. (16) And as Josiah turned himself, he spied the tombs that were there in the mount, and sent and took the bones out of the tombs, and burned them upon the altar, and defiled it, according to the word of the Lord which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these things. (17) Then he said, ‘What monument is that which I see?’ And the men of the city told him, ‘It is the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and proclaimed these things that you have done against the altar of Bethel.’”
Your guarantor needs a guarantor
On the face of it, the layman’s forecasts will succeed more than the expert’s forecasts, for a simple reason: a layman will give a forecast only when the expected scenario seems clear. By contrast, people will generally turn to the expert only in complicated cases where the chances of success are very unclear. In those cases the layman will despair in advance, and his gloomy prophecy will of course fulfill itself.
So there is an “advantage” to the layman’s forecasting ability, but this advantage is an “optical illusion,” and the advantage of wisdom is like the advantage of light over darkness!
Regards, S. Z. Levinger
SZL argued wheat and admitted to his holy remembrance
SZL, I may be a fool but not an idiot. Obviously, when measuring the quality of forecasts one must take forecasts about the same situations and the same questions.
According to your approach, the purpose of the experts is to provide high morale
and what will be in the case where they are pessimistic
alternatively, you would recommend a wartime clown
why exactly were the experts chosen by you to entertain the spirit of the people
SZL
After you wrote one response that seemed actually to depend on reading what you were responding to and understanding it, you’ve returned to your old ways.
With God’s help, 13 Elul 5777
As I mentioned, common sense in the matter before us is simple: the chance that someone acting מתוך knowledge and experience will succeed in identifying the more likely scenario is incomparably greater than the chance of someone who goes like “a blind man in a window” without knowledge and experience and without deep analysis.
Of course experts also make mistakes, but “if in the place of our life we are afraid,” then all the more so in a place where one puts aside intellect, knowledge, and experience and goes “toward snakes.”
Of course, it is advisable to receive the opinions of several experts, and to try to ensure that the experts consulted are among those open to hearing ideas and considerations from others as well. An expert should first and foremost be wise, whose essential definition is: “one who learns from every person.”
With a blessing for a fruitful and enlightening Elul, and for length of days, years, and decades, in robust health, so that you may merit to see the fruit of the studies and statistics that you are planning, may the Lord place it in the hearts of my neighbors, my colleagues on the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education, to work toward realizing your vision speedily in our days 🙂
And with the blessing of all the best, S. Z. Levinger
And as I explained, there is no plausible reality in which there will be an opinion of a layman and of an expert in the same situation. The layman will express an opinion in simple situations that appear unequivocal, whereas the expert will be asked in complicated and ambiguous situations.
There are two situations in which the opinion of a layman may be preferable. One is when he has extensive experience in that situation. Then the experience he has accumulated, backed also by hearing much advice from experts and testing it in the field, makes him no less wise than “the experienced one.” There is also an advantage to the layman when the problem concerns him personally, for then “the heart knows the bitterness of its soul,” and sometimes one listens to him even against the expert.
SZL
Now at last I have been privileged to understand the depth of your broad opinion. What you are really saying is that obviously experts are more correct than laymen, and therefore there is no need to test this. And from here presumably comes proof for your words, since there is not even any need to test them. Truly a brilliant argument.
Just see the difference between you and RMDA: he thinks experts are not more correct, but is aware that the matter requires testing, whereas you come to disagree with him and think the opposite, and your entire argument is that you are right and therefore there is no need even to test.
Really, well done on the enlightening comments. I don’t know how we would manage without an expert like you to explain things to us, and otherwise we would walk around like blind men in windows.
All this is much more complex. I apologize in advance if I did not understand you correctly, but unfortunately in your remarks and your books there is a noticeable contempt for fields of knowledge that are not your own fields and that you do not really understand beyond general knowledge. Just as I do not understand the first thing about physics.
Since I previously worked in one of the above bodies and continue to work in the field as a civilian, being an expert in Islam / the Middle East / Arabic and Persian, here are a few comments for clarification.
1) There is no doubt that we will never be saved from uncertainty, and it is impossible to predict human behavior, unlike technological forecasting or even economic forecasting.
2) There is no “method” or “trick” that enables prediction of the future or precise forecasting, or any pseudo-scientific utopia in the style of Pasig. However, there is a widespread distorted and ridiculous picture of the work of intelligence and assessment bodies. This is not about tossing a coin and predicting how it will fall, but about identifying various important trends while they are occurring; afterward it is an attempt to point them out and to try to assess the degree of their impact. Obviously there are not and cannot be any precise and “scientific” results. It is also important to understand that decision-makers (if they are wise) do not expect intelligence to serve as an oracle or astrologer; rather, it is required to perform two tasks (the intention here is strategic intelligence, not tactical intelligence that answers the simple technical question whether Hezbollah has missiles of type A at point B).
A) To explain the surrounding reality to the leaders, especially when it concerns events and peoples about which the leaders have no idea at all. In other words: intelligence is required to explain whether, in its view, events in Iraq are important for Israel or not, and if so why, how, when, by whom, and under what circumstances.
2) Apparently today there will no longer be classic wars like the Yom Kippur War, but intelligence is required not to stare into a crystal ball it does not have, but rather to think about a dangerous scenario that might happen, and then the state is supposed to allocate resources and means in order to prepare for it, even if it is not the most likely thing to happen. What in the military is called presenting enemy courses of action, according to principles of risk management. If so, the weak link here is the assignment of probabilities; it is true that it is very difficult to explain why there is a 55% probability that Hezbollah will not attack as against a 45% probability that it will attack. But apparently there is no other way, because one cannot do without forecasts and assessments. Why can’t one? Not at all because of some primordial need to guard against uncertainty, but because what in the military is called “force build-up,” policy planning, and the like—processes and procedures—are based on assessing the direction of various developments.
3) By their nature, intelligence bodies are most successful in tasks of the type described above in section 2: collecting targets, finding places, objects, people, and technology, because this is essentially a mathematical task that can be broken down into binary questions and the answer is always yes or no. Therefore and accordingly, the question “Does Iran have nuclear weapons / Is Iran developing nuclear weapons” will always be essentially different from questions like “How does Iran’s leader Ali Khamenei make decisions?”, “Does Assad listen more to the Russians or to the Iranians, and does he listen at all?”, or “What are the intentions of the Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman?” Just as it is much easier to answer the question “How many missiles does Nasrallah have?” than to explain what exactly he means and what he is “really” thinking/planning. This is explained by the concise professional jargon distinction between “capabilities research” and “intentions research.” The second will always be more problematic and saturated with uncertainty than the first.
3) Indeed there are quite a few urban legends about a chimpanzee that predicted better than most experts. The two best books written on the subject (the latter has even been translated into Hebrew)
Of course there are no recipes there, only recommendations that would reduce resounding failures
https://www.amazon.com/Superforecasting-Science-Prediction-Philip-Tetlock/dp/0804136718
https://www.e-vrit.co.il/%D7%AA%D7%97%D7%96%D7%99%D7%95%D7%AA___%D7%A2%D7%9C-details.aspx
https://www.amazon.com/Expert-Political-Judgment-Tetlock-2005-07-25/dp/B01FIX9YPK/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1504596974&sr=1-3
Hello.
Thank you for your remarks. I agree with most of them, and they certainly do not contradict what I wrote. As for the contempt, it is directed mainly toward those who have scientific pretensions where there is no place for them, and also to the fact that in many cases they do not try to put things to an empirical test (even when this is possible. See above what I brought from my friend who served in the army in one of these bodies). These fields in themselves deserve their due respect, each according to its honor and stature.
With God’s help, 22 Elul 5777
Whereas the Greeks believed in a blind fate decreed in advance and unchangeable – the God of Jeremiah is “great in counsel and mighty in deed, whose eyes are open upon all the ways of the children of men, to give everyone according to his ways and according to the fruit of his deeds” (32:18).
The fate of an individual or a nation can be changed by choosing good or its opposite, which alters the decree: “At one moment I may speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up and to break down and to destroy it; but if that nation turns from its evil of which I spoke against it, then I relent of the evil that I intended to do to it. And at another moment I may speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; but if it does evil in My sight, not listening to My voice, then I relent of the good with which I said I would benefit it” (18:7–10).
The prophets warn what the future will be if, heaven forbid, people do not change their deeds—not so that we should say “it is hopeless,” but so that we renew and improve our deeds and fulfill “If you do well, shall you not be uplifted?” Thus Jeremiah says “to every man of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem”: “Thus says the Lord: Behold, I am shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you; return now, each from his evil way, and make your ways and your deeds good” (18:11).
And expositors have already said that Jonah’s prophecy “Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown” was fulfilled through a change of meaning. Instead of being physically overturned like Sodom, Nineveh was turned from evil to good through repentance.
Regards, S. Z. Levinger
Against Jeremiah, who warns the people (chapter 27) not to rebel against the king of Babylon lest exile be decreed on the remnant left in Jerusalem, stands Hananiah ben Azzur and prophesies: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. Within two full years I will bring back to this place all the vessels of the house of the Lord that Nebuchadnezzar took… and Jeconiah son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, and all the exiles of Judah who came to Babylon, I will bring back to this place, says the Lord, for I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon” (28:3–4).
To this Jeremiah responds: “Amen, may the Lord do so… but hear now this word… The prophets who were before me and before you from ancient times prophesied against many lands and against great kingdoms of war and evil and pestilence. As for the prophet who prophesies peace—when the word of that prophet comes to pass, then it shall be known that the Lord has truly sent the prophet” (28:6–9).
And Maimonides explained (Foundations of the Torah 10:4, based on the Jerusalem Talmud Sanhedrin 11:5 and Ta’anit 2:1):
“Words of calamity that the prophet says… if his words do not come to pass, this is no disproof of his prophecy. And one does not say: ‘See, he spoke and it did not happen,’ because the Holy One, blessed be He, is slow to anger and abundant in kindness and relents of evil. It is possible that they repented and were forgiven like the people of Nineveh, or that He suspended it for them like Hezekiah.
But if he promised good and said that such-and-such would happen, and the good he said did not come—then it is known that he is a false prophet; for every decree of good that God makes, even conditionally, He does not retract. Thus you learn that a prophet is tested only by words of good.
This is what Jeremiah the prophet said to Hananiah ben Azzur: when Jeremiah was prophesying evil and Hananiah good, he said to him: Hananiah, if my words do not stand, that is no proof that I am a false prophet; but if your words do not stand, then it will be known that you are a false prophet.”
Radak, in his commentary to Jeremiah, comments on Jeremiah 18:9–10: “And at another moment I may speak concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; but if it does evil, not listening to My voice—then I relent of the good which I said I would do to it.” He answers: “One must distinguish between these two measures, for evil will not come if they repent. But good will in any case come once God has designated it; however, it will not endure if they do evil.” A prophecy for good will be fulfilled even if they sin, but the good will not continue over time, whereas in a prophecy of calamity repentance may bring a total cancellation of the decree.
Rabbi Elijah Mizrachi (the Re’em) raised the difficulty from Jacob’s fear, “perhaps sin will cause it,” although God had promised him He would protect him. He distinguished between a promise said personally to a prophet, where there is room for “sin may cause it,” and a prophet who tells the public a good prophecy in the name of God, where the good prophecy serves as a test of the prophet’s reliability, and therefore God will not retract and will fulfill the prophecy even if, God forbid, “sin may cause it” (the Re’em’s words are brought in Lechem Mishneh, Foundations of the Torah 10:4).
Rabbi Yitzhak son of Rabbi David, author of the responsa Divrei Emet, distinguishes on the basis of Nahmanides’ words in the portion Lech Lecha, that when the prophet performs a symbolic act as a sign that his prophecy will be fulfilled in any case, and says: “For every prophecy that comes through an emissary prophet—if he performed an act symbolizing the prophecy—then his prophecy is fulfilled in any case, and sin and iniquity do not prevent it. Not so when he performed no act, but only speech—if sin causes it, then that prophecy is not fulfilled” (Divrei Emet, homily 14, folio 38d).
I have brought here some of the approaches on this issue, to which I was referred in the Frankel edition of Maimonides; and “give to a wise man, and he will become yet wiser.”
With the blessing, “May it be a year of strength and life,” S. Z. Levinger
Paragraph 2, line 3:
… in which case the good prophecy serves as a test of the prophet’s reliability, and therefore God will not retract His word, and will fulfill the prophecy even…
In short, SZL, apologetics at its best
there is absolutely no need for a prophecy to be fulfilled, and any false prophet or charlatan can blame his flock for spoiling the prophecy
and there is no righteous man on earth who does good and does not sin
so prophecies are merely recommendations
Isaiah’s prophecies were fulfilled with foresight of 200 years. I will begin with a quotation, and from there turn to ask you, Rabbi Michi, whether these prophecies constitute in your view sufficiently hard evidence with respect to the above post; and in general, as an additional question, are they possible—does your approach hold that God, being unable to know the future connected with the free choices of human beings, can nevertheless predict that a Persian man named “Cyrus” will conquer Babylon and return Israel to their land (Isaiah chapter 44
(26) “Who confirms the word of His servant and fulfills the counsel of His messengers; who says of Jerusalem, ‘She shall be inhabited,’ and of the cities of Judah, ‘They shall be built,’ and I will raise up her ruins;
(27) who says to the deep, ‘Be dry, and I will dry up your rivers’;
(28) who says of Cyrus, ‘He is My shepherd, and he shall fulfill all My pleasure’; even saying of Jerusalem, ‘She shall be built,’ and of the Temple, ‘Your foundation shall be laid.’”
And in chapter 45
(1) “Thus says the Lord to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped, to subdue nations before him and to loose the loins of kings, to open doors before him so that gates shall not be shut: (2) I will go before you and level the exalted places; I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut through bars of iron.
(3) And I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that I, the Lord, who call you by your name, am the God of Israel. (4) For the sake of My servant Jacob and Israel My chosen, I have called you by your name; I have surnamed you, though you have not known Me. (5) I am the Lord, and there is no other; besides Me there is no God. I will gird you, though you have not known Me,
(6) that they may know from the rising of the sun and from the west that there is none besides Me; I am the Lord, and there is no other.”
(And what about the same phenomenon without mentioning the name of an individual personality explicitly—for some claim that “Cyrus” is a later addition—would that be possible for you? For there is still sufficiently detailed information heralding that Babylon will be conquered and that the conqueror—whatever his name or time—will be the one to return Israel from exile.)
It should be prefaced that these prophecies from Isaiah chapters 40–66 are attributed to the unnamed prophet called in scholarship Deutero-Isaiah, who lived in the days of the return to Zion, in the 6th century BCE. The (main) reason that scholarship holds there is no basis for assuming this was in fact the same Isaiah from the 8th century BCE is precisely because of the implausibility of the ability to predict the future in such detail—something that immediately raises suspicion of forgery. Against this scholarly claim, Rabbi Y. Carlebach argues:
“The book itself points to the unique and one-time character, incomparable with the nature of its messianic oracles, something not found among any other prophet. Where else does a prophet boast of the special power of his words to tell in advance beyond the range of the distant future? In more than ten places Isaiah highlights the uniqueness of his oracles about Cyrus. He seems to summon his contemporaries to a judicial hearing and demands of his listeners that they produce a parallel example of a similar foreknowledge of future events” (list of quotations, and immediately afterward continuation of the quote from Carlebach:
Isaiah chapter 41
(4) “Who has performed and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I, the Lord, the first, and with the last, I am He.”
(22) “Let them bring them and tell us what shall happen. Tell us the former things, what they are, that we may consider them and know their outcome; or declare to us the things to come.
(23) Tell us what is to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods; indeed, do good or do evil, that we may be dismayed and see it together…
(25) I have stirred up one from the north, and he has come; from the rising of the sun he shall call upon My name…
(26) Who declared it from the beginning, that we might know, and beforehand, that we might say, ‘He is right’? There was none that declared, none that proclaimed, none that heard your words.”
Isaiah chapter 43
(9) “Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the peoples be assembled. Who among them can declare this, and show us the former things? Let them bring their witnesses, that they may be justified; or let them hear, and say, ‘It is true.’
(10) You are My witnesses, says the Lord, and My servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe Me and understand that I am He. Before Me no god was formed, nor shall there be after Me…
(12) I have declared and saved and proclaimed, and there was no strange god among you; and you are My witnesses, says the Lord, and I am God…
(14) Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: For your sake I have sent to Babylon and brought down all of them as fugitives, and the Chaldeans in the ships of their rejoicing…
(19) Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth; do you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
Isaiah chapter 44
(7) “And who, as I, shall call and shall declare it, and set it in order for Me, since I appointed the ancient people? And the things that are coming and shall come, let them declare to them.
(8) Do not fear, neither be afraid; have I not from of old made you hear it and declared it? And you are My witnesses. Is there a God besides Me? Indeed, there is no Rock; I know not any.”
Isaiah chapter 45
(21) “Declare and bring it forth; indeed, let them take counsel together. Who has announced this from of old? Who has declared it of old? Have not I, the Lord? And there is no other God besides Me, a just God and a Savior; there is none besides Me.”
Isaiah chapter 46
(10) “Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure’;
(11) calling a bird of prey from the east (= Cyrus, all the commentators), the man of My counsel from a far country. Indeed, I have spoken; I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it; I will also do it.”
Isaiah chapter 48
(3) “The former things I declared of old; they went out from My mouth, and I caused them to be heard; suddenly I did them, and they came to pass…
(5) Therefore I declared them to you long ago; before they came to pass I caused you to hear them, lest you should say, ‘My idol has done them, and my carved image and my molten image commanded them.’
(6) You have heard; see all this; and will you not declare it? I have caused you to hear new things from this time, even hidden things, and you did not know them.
(7) They are created now, and not from of old; and before today you did not hear them, lest you should say, ‘Behold, I knew them’…
(14) All of you, assemble yourselves and hear. Who among them has declared these things? The Lord loves him; he shall do His pleasure on Babylon, and His arm shall be on the Chaldeans.
(15) I, I have spoken; indeed, I have called him; I have brought him, and he shall make his way prosperous.
(16) Come near to Me, hear this: from the beginning I have not spoken in secret; from the time it was, there am I; and now the Lord God has sent Me, and His spirit…”)
Thus the prophet declares that all his prophecies were already known beforehand from of old and that he did not speak in secret (45:19: “I did not speak in secret, in a place of the land of darkness; I did not say to the seed of Jacob, ‘Seek Me in vain’; I the Lord speak righteousness, declare things that are right”), and these are his words: “The former things I declared of old, and they went out of My mouth and I caused them to be heard; suddenly I did them, and they came to pass. Because I knew that you are obstinate, and your neck is an iron sinew and your brow bronze, therefore I declared it to you from of old; before it came to pass I caused you to hear it, lest you should say, ‘My idol has done them, and my carved image and molten image commanded them.’ You have heard; see all this; and will you not declare it? I have caused you to hear new things from this time, even hidden things, and you did not know them. They are created now, and not from of old, and before today you did not hear them, lest you should say, ‘Behold, I knew them’” (48:3–7). Precisely an announcement of this sort about future events was liable to bend Israel’s iron neck, and only through it did Israel become a witness to the Lord (Isaiah 43:10: “You are My witnesses, says the Lord, and My servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe Me and understand that I am He; before Me no god was formed, neither shall there be after Me”; chapter 44: “Do not fear, neither be afraid; have I not from of old caused you to hear and declared it? And you are My witnesses. Is there a God besides Me? Indeed, there is no Rock; I know not any.”)
End of the quote, cited and translated in the book Vision of the Bible, Rabbi Issachar Jacobson, part 2, p. 54 (and the entire chapter there is devoted to the issue of Deutero-Isaiah and the foundations of prophecy)
Anyone who studies Deutero-Isaiah stands amazed at his attempt to prove that since he predicted the former things—known to all—and they were fulfilled (the former things—the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus), so too the latter things will be fulfilled (Cyrus’s proclamation for Israel’s return to their land)
And see at length in the introduction to the scholarly commentary of Mikra LeYisrael
With God’s help, 23 Elul 5777
To Moishbb – greetings,
In Jeremiah’s words to Hananiah ben Azzur (28:9) it is explained: “As for the prophet who prophesies peace—when the word of the prophet comes to pass, then it shall be known that the Lord has truly sent the prophet.” And Maimonides explained, based on the Jerusalem Talmud, that a prophecy of calamity may be canceled or delayed, but a prophecy of good is not canceled through sin.
Since in chapter 18 Jeremiah says that there is a case where the Lord may decree to build and plant and then relent because of evil conduct, Radak explained that the good prophecy must in any case begin to be fulfilled unconditionally, and only afterward may punishment come for the sin.
According to the Re’em, when a prophet comes with a message to the public—the good prophecy must be fulfilled even if there is sin; according to Rabbi Divrei Emet (based on Nahmanides), an emissary prophet who prophesies a good prophecy and performs a sign for his words (as Hananiah did when he broke the bars) — his good prophecy must be fulfilled unconditionally.
Either way, there is a clear test that distinguishes between a true prophet and a false prophet: one who comes with a rosy message to the public in the name of the Lord cannot escape it!
To this must be added the basic condition that Maimonides wrote, that a prophet must be a great sage in Torah and righteous in his character and deeds, and that a prophecy contradicting the prophecy of Moses our teacher is certainly a false prophecy—so clearly not everyone who wants to take the name may do so.
With blessings of all the best, S. Z. Levinger
I now add what I saw in Me’am Lo’ez, p. 211 (in the name of Don Isaac Abarbanel): “Even though our sages said, ‘Every promise for good that issued from the Holy One, blessed be He—even conditionally—He does not retract,’ this does not mean if they worship idols or shed blood. Therefore, even though the land was promised to the Patriarchs—if they continue to walk in their evil ways, the land will be taken from them.” Is it not entirely reasonable that a prophecy for good should not grant immunity even from the gravest crimes when their commission is visible to every eye!
Paragraph 1, line 2:
… that a prophecy of calamity can be canceled or delayed through repentance, but a prophecy of good…
See Rachel Margaliot’s book, There Was One Isaiah.
Regards, S. Z. Levinger
Here too, the Torah must provide a complex answer to conflicting demands—on the one hand, the principle of recompense, which requires precision in reward for good deeds and punishment for their opposite; and on the other hand, the need for an unequivocal test of the reliability of one claiming prophecy. That is what the discussion among the sages concerns: when the principle of recompense is preserved and when the prophecy must be fulfilled without conditions.
Regards, S. Z. Levinger
Somehow I ended up at this column today in 2024.
I read the article you linked by David Pasig from 2012, and he actually did a pretty good job with the warming and open confrontation between the United States and Russia around 2020, and with the way this would lead to an explosion here for us involving Iran and Hezbollah.
Of course that could be accidental, but out of the very rich range of possibilities reality could have produced, he did manage to hit rather well on the geopolitical conflicts.
Thank you very much!.
Two comments:
1.
If I understood correctly, the problematic issue you see in determining the quality of a forecasting source can be summarized as follows: first, every forecast is based on a different basis. (In my words: it is impossible to decide what the “group of forecasts of the same kind” is to which we should apply the statistical test.) And second, the forecasts are often not binary and are open to interpretation.
In my opinion there is another problem you didn’t mention. Even if we assume that we are dealing with a forecasting body that provides binary forecasts, and also assume that we have a way to determine what the “group of forecasts of the same kind” is, it is still impossible to know the quality of the forecast.
The reason is simple. Suppose we checked and found that 60 out of 100 forecasts turned out to be correct. We still have two possibilities before us. The first possibility is to assume that this was merely guesswork and this result happened by chance. (After all, the probability of getting at least 60 heads in a series of 100 coin tosses – is really not bad at all.) The second possibility is to assume that this really is a higher-quality forecast.
That is, in practice all we can infer from the facts is the *probability* that this is a reliable forecast. That probability rises as the number of successful forecasts rises.
However, very often the number of successful forecasts is such that there is still a high probability that this is just guessing, and yet people infer from it the quality of the forecasting source. That is a mistake.
2.
The conclusion you are driving toward, that the forecasts of various experts are often worthless (except for economists, for some reason), seems to me mistaken.
True, for the reasons you mentioned it is very difficult, and sometimes impossible, to test the quality of the forecast. But that still doesn’t mean we should assume the forecasts are worthless; it only means that their value cannot be proven. In my humble opinion, one can assume a priori that the forecast of an expert with broad knowledge in a certain field is better than that of a layman, even if we cannot empirically prove this claim.
Such a claim can be supported by an analogical argument. After all, we agree that a layman’s forecast based on data known to everyone is infinitely better than a baseless guess. (For example, the soccer match against Germany.) By the same token, it is reasonable that the quality of a forecast based on a broader database than the layman’s rises accordingly, even if this cannot be empirically proven.
There is no doubt that one can argue with the analogical argument and draw various distinctions. My point is only to draw attention to the fact that jumping to a sweeping conclusion about the worthlessness of expert forecasts is a hasty step.