There is a lot of B.S. flying loose on Internet concerning the alleged danger of Y2K ending up being a supposedly "self-fulfilled" prophecy.

Actually, there is no such thing. Still many people believe that self- fulfilled prophecies can happen, although they cannot exemplify a single case in the history of mankind. They always mention hypothetical situations that could theoretically happen, but never have, maybe because humans beings are really stupid, but not THAT stupid.

Be it as it may, this whole situation reminds me of a high school poem

"There was a man from Perz"------------------------------------------- "who dreamed he was eating a shoe"------------------------------------ "he woke in the night"------------------------------------------------ "with a terrible fright"---------------------------------------------- "and found it was perfectly true"-------------------------------------

Can anyone mention ("polly" or not) a real-life self-fulfilled prophecy that has already taken place? Please post it.

-- George Vilches (jvilches@sminter.com.ar), May 28, 1999

Answers

Yeah. I had a student who felt that it was no use to study for the exam because he was going to fail anyway. He didn't study. He failed.

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), May 28, 1999.

* * * 19990528 Friday

I really ought to have better things to do tonight ...

... I just can't get motivated.

Regards, Bob Mangus

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< http://www.hbg.psu.edu/faculty/jxr11/weber.html >

Prophecies of future events abound throughout human history and comprise a portion of most of the worlds religions. Sometimes belief in the validity of a prophecy becomes the driving force for an actors activities and thus leads to the fulfillment of the prophecy (in other words a self-fulfilling prophecy).

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-- Robert Mangus (rmangus@hotmail.com), May 28, 1999.

* * * 19990528 Friday

Submission ...

"... Sometimes belief in the validity of a prophecy becomes the driving force for an actors activities and thus leads to the fulfillment of the prophecy (in other words a self-fulfilling prophecy)."

In the Y2K scenario, there is no "belief" ( i.e., irrational article of _faith_ ) at stake, _OPINIONS NOTWITHSTANDING!!_

However, there is _objective evidence_ ( i.e., article of _fact_ ) of systemic failures IF the defective code [hardware/firmware/software] is not physically changed and implemented ( e.g., Ameritech: 31,000,000 LOC--of an alleged inventory of 100,000,000 LOC--with post- 12/31/99 defective and vulnerable date computations ).

...

Regards, Bob Mangus

* * *

-- Robert Mangus (rmangus@hotmail.com), May 28, 1999.

Can anybody explain to me how self fullfilling prophecy applies to the hardware and software? Is there some AI program out there that is worrying about Y2K?

Back to reality, the sole example of S.F.P. is the banking arena. Please note, not withstanding the protestations of a banker on another thread, that no fiat monetary system has ever survived any considerable length of time. Of course if ones idea of "survive" is for a currency to loss it's value over time, then the original Israeli sheckle (1948) which has lost only 99.999% of its value to date has "survived".

Opps, forgot the stock market. I've heard rumors that price earning ratios are just a bit on the high side. Of course if a company has never turned a profit, calculating P/E ratio gets complicated. P.S. If a day's market downturn is called a "correction" and corrections are made to eliminate mistakes, are the TV talking heads going to call the next day's market upturn a "mistake"? "The DJIA had a mistake toady and went up nearly 500 points." Makes about as much sense as calling a downturn "profit taking" versus calling an upturn "loss taking".

-- Ken Seger (kenseger@earthlink.net), May 29, 1999.

it was foretold...that if I waited,and never lost faith,that more would be revealed about the history of Darth Vader,and HUZZAH!!it is so!

-- zoobie (zoobiezoob@yahoo.com), May 29, 1999.