You should look at information gain when evaulating the strength of a prophecy. For instance, “closed countries will become open at some point in the future.” Assume this requires a major change in government, then look at the expected rate of major government change—I’m going to make a guess of a 2% chance per year. After 14 years (1976-1990), observing a government change major enough to open a country gives you around 2 bits of information.
That means this “prophecy” is approximately as impressive as prophecying correctly that a fair coin will come up heads twice.
Even if you read the prophecies with no bias whatsoever, if you’re charitable enough to forgive 3 failures for each 1 amazingly correct prediction, the prophet cannot lose.
Some of the nations were opened up before 1990. Further, this is not saying one country opened up but many. Perhaps you are not aware that in 1976 it appeared as though communism would last forever and saying not just one but that all of Soviet bloc would not be communist in 14 years was viewed as an impossibility.
if you’re charitable enough to forgive 3 failures for each 1 amazingly correct prediction, the prophet cannot lose.
I’m not familiar enough with the publications of the LDS church to list any. Reading the linked speech, “opening new areas” did seem to be the only thing one could fairly call a prediction. Perhaps there are no unfulfilled predictions in the historical records.
More likely, perhaps most prophecies had different possibilities for information gain; even that prophecy--1 major government change every 50 years was just a guess, although the single government change in the USSR was the proximate cause of each country’s opening.
But all I really meant to say is that a prophecy is not a boolean quantity, but a point on a continuum from correctly predicting “the sun will rise tomorrow” to correctly predicting “the sun will not rise tomorrow.” Before treating a prophecy as evidence for any particular properties of the prophet or the prophet’s sponsor, you should locate it on that continuum.
You should look at information gain when evaulating the strength of a prophecy. For instance, “closed countries will become open at some point in the future.” Assume this requires a major change in government, then look at the expected rate of major government change—I’m going to make a guess of a 2% chance per year. After 14 years (1976-1990), observing a government change major enough to open a country gives you around 2 bits of information.
That means this “prophecy” is approximately as impressive as prophecying correctly that a fair coin will come up heads twice.
Even if you read the prophecies with no bias whatsoever, if you’re charitable enough to forgive 3 failures for each 1 amazingly correct prediction, the prophet cannot lose.
Some of the nations were opened up before 1990. Further, this is not saying one country opened up but many. Perhaps you are not aware that in 1976 it appeared as though communism would last forever and saying not just one but that all of Soviet bloc would not be communist in 14 years was viewed as an impossibility.
Where are the failures?
I’m not familiar enough with the publications of the LDS church to list any. Reading the linked speech, “opening new areas” did seem to be the only thing one could fairly call a prediction. Perhaps there are no unfulfilled predictions in the historical records.
More likely, perhaps most prophecies had different possibilities for information gain; even that prophecy--1 major government change every 50 years was just a guess, although the single government change in the USSR was the proximate cause of each country’s opening.
But all I really meant to say is that a prophecy is not a boolean quantity, but a point on a continuum from correctly predicting “the sun will rise tomorrow” to correctly predicting “the sun will not rise tomorrow.” Before treating a prophecy as evidence for any particular properties of the prophet or the prophet’s sponsor, you should locate it on that continuum.