Prediction – the other dismal science?

An insightful person once said, "Prediction is like driving your car forward by looking only at the rearview mirror!". If the road is dead-straight, you are good . . . UNLESS there is a stalled vehicle ahead in the middle of the road. We should consider short-term and long-term prediction separately. Long-term prediction is nearly a lost cause. In the 80's and 90's, chaos and complexity theorists showed us that things can spin out of control even when we have perfect past and present information (predicting weather beyond 3 weeks is a major challenge, if not impossible).