How To Be Taken Seriously As A Prophet
Here's a fine example of someone who took advantage of this reliable technique.
Endoftheworldpredictions.com is a web site that sells books (what a surprise!). Actually, they sell ebooks (so much easier than convincing a real publisher to believe in your particular brand of snake oil, or self-publishing, which requires that YOU actually believe it yourself).
Here's the opening page of this site:
Nothing new here. A fairly standard doomsday "artist's conception" of cataclysm, and a completely worthless "testimonial." The waffle words are there too: "Would you like to know what is probably going to happen...?" "...major risks that could change the we all live today [sic]." (Typical poor proofreading as well—bonus!)
Now here's my favorite part, and all you aspiring prognosticators should take careful note. Take a good look at the "prediction" I circled below:
Wowee-zowie! He nailed it! I guess I better buy this book right now, so I won't miss any of the other gems. (You just know the Pope is up to no good!)
The market's in the dumper, and he predicted it way back in...uh...hmm. Hold it. How do I know when he predicted the market tanking? Well, that's a little harder, but we can certainly figure out the last time the page was updated. That takes nothing more sophisticated than a "whois" search. And when you "whois" endoftheworldpredictions.com, you get the following information:
See that last line? July 2008? This demonstrates that the site owner had opportunity to lie his ass off. Sure, the domain (not the page—an important distinction) was created more than a year before. But if the date of the last update had been around that same time (i.e. before the market started going south), this might have been evidence of some sort of predictive powers. As it is, this evidence only casts doubt on the entire affair. Between this domain's creation date and the last update, the Dow dropped 2,000 points, a 14% loss in value. Here in the dark days of February '09 with the market hovering around 8,000, it's easy to forget how bad that was. Predicting a stock market drop at that point was pretty easy. It had already happened.Registrant:
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: ENDOFTHEWORLDPREDICTIONS.COM
Created on: 18-Jun-07
Expires on: 18-Jun-09
Last Updated on: 30-Jul-08
But then again, so what? What does the stock market have to do with a giant comet, asteroid or planetoid (or whatever that is in that lurid picture) colliding with the Earth? Oh, but the Endoftheworld people are pretty cagey about it. (All so-called prophets are—a big clue.) Read more of their waffle words from their "About Us" page [The Fool's snarky comments are in red with brackets]:
The staff at End of the World Predictions prides itself on the many years of experience in forecasting, international business, varied technologies, finance, economics, and law. Most of these years were derived from working at the headquarters of Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies. [None of which we will name for you now. It's easier for us to lie if you can't check our story. Why do you think we registered with Domains By Proxy in the first place? Fortunately, enough people will simply believe us that it won't matter.]Through a vast array of resources, we come up with predictions that may or may not coincide with prophesies. [Waffle words: "May or may not." Wow—these guys are so good!] Given our past experience we use available data and experience to come up with our predictions. [Meaningless. "We say whatever we think will sell our ebooks.] Coincidently [sic. Why are prophets always illiterate?] many predictions do fall in line with the prophesies of Nostradamus, Mayan Calendar, and Bible Code. [Coincidence is the only way that will happen.] But, we really like to say no one can predict the actual dates events will happen. We can come up with fairly high statistical probabilities that certain events will happen but variables can and will change over a given period of time. [Do please tell us about your heretofore unmentioned expertise with statistical probability. Exactly how do you analyze the "high statistical probability" of anything "predicted" by Nostradamus, the Mayans or the—hard to say with a straight face—Bible Code. Are the statistical probabilities of these "predictions" even marginally as high as the statistical probability that endoftheworldpredictions.com is selling snake oil?]
We are confident in is the probabilities are very high the events we predict will happen and as time goes those probabilities increase further. Given there are several major events that can be triggered at one time, we felt the need to let the world know what was coming. [Huh?]
How would you prepare given you knew something was about to happen? When hurricanes are in reach of a coastline many people will flee but others will stay. Most of the time they survive but like Katrina even the unexpected can happen and those that stayed suffer in many ways. [See that, everybody? They said "Katrina," and that happened. Be afrad—be very afraid!]
We want you to be prepared. [Really? So you're jst doing this out of the goodness of your hearts? Then how about giving this information away for free? The "prophet" who helps billions of people avert global disaster will be hailed as the greatest humanitarian in history. But that's not what you're doing, is it? You're selling this junk, trying to mislead people. "Be prepared?" Prepared to waste your money.]
We want your expectations to be set. [Bingo.] There have been many false alarms [Double bingo] and there will be more [Triple bingo!] but it only takes one event that we are predicting to wreak havoc on the way you live today.
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