Speaking or predictions…

…here is another one we can check in a few weeks:

Dead Man Debating

But make no mistake — no matter how polished and presidential he looks on that stage tonight, Rudy Giuliani’s days as a serious contender are almost certainly over. He’s a dead man debating.

He hedges with the phrase “almost certainly”. But this is a pretty strong statement:

That’s the question Rudy is likely to be asking as the story gets bigger and bigger. And the answers won’t be pretty, because the rats are going to flee this sinking ship. And finally, in a week or two, Rudy is going to have to decide whether he wants to pull out before Iowa, and save what little dignity he has remaining, or risk polling below Ron Paul in every primary.

The reason this prediction is interesting is because it’s so testable. In just a couple of weeks we will know - is the prediction right or wrong?

Why am I so interested in predictions right now? I can think of two reasons. First, there was this article written in 2001: Here’s Why Apple Stores Won’t Work. It was completely wrong.

Second, the kids and I are reading a book about Albert Einstein right now. Einstein came up with theories, and then he made predicitions from those theories that completely defied the conventional wisdom. What is so interesting about Einstein’s predicitions is that some of them could be tested (for example, by waiting for a total eclipse of the sun). Then they turned out to be correct, proving his theories to be true. There is something incredibly powerful about that. Einstein had no need to hedge with an “almost certainly”. If the predictions didn’t come true, Einstein’s theories were dead. He had a lot on the line.

So in the case of Rudy, a person with a big audience is making a testable prediction based on his theory of politics. We can see how his theory stacks up.