Monday, February 2, 2015

The Power of Predictions?


Has there ever been a time in your life when someone mentioned that something unlikely might happen and it did? Did the fact that the event was “predicted” cause you to behave differently than you would have otherwise and make it more likely for the event to occur? Or did the event simply occur without any assistance from you?

20 comments:

  1. Honestly, I can not think of a single instance where something unlikely has been predicted and then has actually happen. I imagine that if I were in a situation like this, I would act a bit more cautious and question things more. I think that I would expect that someone had something to do with the similarities. I think the only way I would change the situation would be that I would act more suspicious despite how I was predicted to act

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  3. I don't usually have times where people predict what's going to happen and then it does. A lot of the time when it's about fifty-fifty, my friends can predict it. The only time where it really happens that makes me behave differently is when people start making assumptions in the World Cup. I predict things about the underdog, and sometimes that comes true. I bet on Costa Rica after my Godfather predicted they would do well, and I never bet. Then my behavior ended with me earning money. I know that's kind of lame, but I don't really ever have people predict things about unlikely stuff. Who knows, maybe that'll change, but unlikely things usually don't happen to me.

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  4. This does happen from time to time but never has the mere act of predicting it caused it to happen. I may act different when this unlikely event occur but I doubtThat there are many self fulfilling prophecies. Usually it starts out with wouldn't it be funny if and then it happens and usually the funnier thing is we just said that but no specific instances come to mind.

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  5. In my experience, when people predict certain things that are unlikely to happen, they don't affect the way I behave or change anything. This is usually because most of the time they are just joking about it so I don't take them seriously. For example, while playing a board game, someone might joke about rolling the perfect number in order to win the game, but I wouldn't really take them seriously, or someone might say that I would win the lottery, but that wouldn't make me want to buy lottery tickets. There could be times where someone expresses a lot of confidence in you which inspires you to do your best, but other than that, I haven't had any experience where someone has mentioned that something out of the ordinary would happen and it affected me in a way that made it happen.

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  6. There are moments when you can predict something because of actions you have done before, but I don’t usually find myself predicting totally unlikely things. I feel as if you are to predict something it’s because of something you think will happen, similar to recent actions. If a friend predicted something I would try to make the prediction real, it would give me the idea to try and make it happen. Usually, unlikely predictions are jokes among friends. So you don’t think it will happen anyway.

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  7. When I first started the show season, my trainer told me she could see me walking across the stage at the awards ceremony with a ribbon in my hands. I didn't believe her, of course, but I soon found myself rising in the rankings. That was my second year competing for the state championship, so I'd already established myself as a contender, but I never imagined winning. However, I was able to become the state champion through a last minute win at state finals. Maybe the fact that my trainer told me that she thought I could win gave me a subconscious confidence boost - believe you can and you will? maybe it just happened. Maybe every other competitor had a bad year. I'm not really sure.

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  8. Something like that happened a few years ago. I was worried about the weather in Wyoming, but everyone told me that nothing would happen. We then got caught in a really bad hail storm, and later found out that there was a terrible tornado where we'd just driven from. I was so shocked that even to this day I don't even know what I was thinking at the time, but I do remember that I was impressed with my self for knowing what would happen. I was very scared and I don't think it would have changed if I didn't really predict what was going to happen. Even though I had a feeling of the event, it was still shocking so it would have been the same in any event, predicted or not.

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  9. One time I was riding my cousin’s horse, who was huge and young, and I was riding around with my cousin instructing me. Towards the end of our ride I realized that what we were doing was pretty hard for such a big horse to do at the speed we were taking it. Although we had been doing great together the whole time, I then remembered before I had come to visit my cousin my mom telling me not to fall off, especially on such a big horse because it was a long way down. I saw the scene in my head and tried to ignore it and I did, but of course, a few rounds later we cantered through cones which went well, but then when we turned in the corner the horse forgot where his feet were (again, he was young) and i fell off. I think my mom talking about me falling off freaked me out without me realizing it because I’m not afraid of falling off, it happens a lot, but my mom mentioning it put the idea in my head. It was also a weird situation of the horse tripping over itself because it never did it again the whole rest of my visit. The odds of me falling off like that that day were very slim, maybe my mom put the idea in my head, maybe it just happened.

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  10. I can't recall any times that someone has predicted the unlikely and it has actually happened. A few years ago, though, my trainer as she was leaving to go to college predicted that I would go far in my riding abilities and that she was proud to have taught me. Of course, she probably said that to everyone, but it did change my behavior and my outlook on my riding. Maybe there is something special about me. Maybe I can make it in this competitive world of horses. Although it hasn't happened yet and maybe never will, my courage in the ring and outlook on riding in General has taken a turn for the better.

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  11. My team was the 65 seed in a tournament playing against the 4 seed and our coach told us we could win. It let our team play with more confidence and eventually win the game. I think it got momentum on our side because everyone doubted it, but when we took the lead, we grew more confident. I I don't think we would have won if our coach did not say what he said. We played harder that game than any other game in the season, so I would say when something unlikely is stated out loud, it makes it a more realistic goal or event. We ended up taking the next game for granted and losing against a team we should have beat. I think when people think of something being unlikely internally, they don't think much about it, but when someone else states the same thing, it makes the event seem more likely.

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  12. There have been many moments in my life when someone has said something that was probably not going to happen, yet it still did. Although those moments were just something that if I acted differently it would've have done anything. Many of those events happened without out me doing anything. One recent event when I said the Patriots would beat the Seahawks by 3-7 points. I didn't act differently or do anything unless posting on Twitter, "Mr. Tom Brady, you da man! Let's get 'em!", allowed the patriots to win the Super Bowl, only because I made that one tweet was the reason why the patriots won the Super Bowl. It's not likely. Most of the events that happened were sports or physically related. There was one time in class where I was just joking around about a kickball in p.e. outside. I said there would be a pop fly to the left field but someone would try and catch but they would drop it. It happened and we were all surprised. I said something similar again and we bet. This time I was also right. For the third time we went outside, and I said that a person who not good at all would hit a dinger. Everybody bet against me, so I acted differently. I acted really cocky and proud of my choice, so that made me give the kicker a pep talk. That pep talk might have helped him to hit a dinger. It wouldn't have made the made more likely to occur because unpredictable things like these are very unpredictable. No matter how much you act or do things differently changing the outcome is very hard to do unless your directly involved in the action. If I were a underdog in a MMA tournament (by the way, I would be an amazing underdog and demolish my way to the top), the only way I could change the most predictable outcome into a less probable that favored me would depended on how I acted. It would depend on whether I had the determination, will and passion to try and change the outcome or make another event more likely. My final conclusion is if you're directly involved the outcome will more likely be changed or another event would be made more likely, and it would be a lot more obvious.

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  13. There's no particular time which comes to mind when someone's predictions have come true, but whenever someone tells me something bad will happen (because nobody ever predicts something will go well... wait... Is that just a me thing?) I immediately assume that regardless of what I do that bad thing will happen. I don't know if subconsciously this makes me act in a way to where that thing will happen, but it seems like it always does. Maybe I have bad luck, maybe my ideas are doomed from the start, maybe some other worldly curse which states that any malevolent predictions about my actions will come true is involved somehow, or maybe I'm over dramatizing things, or possibly because my mind values losses so much more than victories I only remember things being predicted to and going poorly.

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  14. For a long time, I've always thought, and my parents might have mentioned this as a thought too, that there was a chance my sister could read and we've just do not know because she cannot speak and cannot tell us that she can read. It was never because of something I saw however, just a thought here and there. Just recently however, one of her therapists suggested the idea that maybe she can. She can recognize a lot of things just by looking at them (usually a picture as well but sometimes it seems like she can recognize a word and what it is). I do not think I've had any sort of effect on this nor do I think that it was because I helped her try and learn to read. I read her a book here and there and sometimes I try and test her reading skills just for fun but that's about it. Most of it comes from her teachers and therapists.

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  15. There has been times where people have made predictions that are a fifty-fifty chance of it happening, but nothing outrageous. At times, me or my friends might take a crazy shot in basketball that has little to no chance of going in, and someone might say that it will go in. When it does go in, I don't think someone predicting it changes my feelings. Another example is the Super Bowl. I think people predicting the outcome of the game the day before isn't as impressive as someone predicting it when the season starts. I think predicting things far before it happens is more impressive and amazing than predicting something a day or two away.

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  16. I can't think of any times that it affected me directly but I can think of times that it has happened in sports. I predicted the Bears drafting a certain player who I had followed in his college career. His name was Dan LeFevour and he went to Central Michigan. The only way that it affected my behavior was that I jokingly started calling myself the Oracle. I couldn't have affected it in any way because I'm not the GM of the Bears. I think that it was a completely independent event from me saying it was going to happen.

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  17. When I was in third grade, my family went skiing in North Carolina. My mother doesn't like skiing, except when it's on flat ground. She was fussing and worrying, saying that my brother and I were going to hurt ourselves, and we should stay with her off the slopes. My brother and I payed her no mind, we were both excited to ski, since we had seen hardly any snow at home in Georgia. This also meant we had had little practice. Soon enough I had fallen and broken my leg. As most kids are when a parent worries about them, I totally ignored my mothers prediction, and I was uninfluenced by it

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  18. Last year, I was favored to win both the 1600 and 3200 at the state championships. I ended up partially achieving the feat by winning one and getting second in the other. The pressure and expectations definitely got to me a little bit, but I still tried to keep calm. However, nowadays, I know that the pressure probably effected me more than I would have liked it to.

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  19. No certain instance stands out in my mind where something unlikely was predicted and ended up happening. The main area where I've seen things like this is in sports. I am a big sports fan, and obviously sometimes in sports there can be crazy, unlikely events. There is probably someone who predicted it somewhere, but no one that I've necessarily talked to. I think when these unlikely events happen, it is random and there isn't really anything you can do to make it happen again.

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  20. I can't really remember a time that someone predict something unlikely to happen and it did. Usually if something is unlikely to happen I don't think it will. Sometimes I really want something to happen but I know it's so unlikely that it won't, but I guess everybody gets hopeful about things. Maybe one time that this happened though was in 7th grade. In the junior high they do a poetry slam every year and everyone is required to write a slam poem and then three people from each class present their poems in front of the whole school. I really wanted to present my poem to the whole school but I knew that there was no chance of me getting chosen. Then when the class voted on their favorite poems I had the most votes and got to read my poem to the entire junior high. Looking back on that moment I'm still surprised because my writing was absolute horrible in 7th grade but I'm glad I had the experience. I guess it has made me more interested in poetry but I think I would have loved poetry even if I hadn't been chosen to present my poem.

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