Thank you. You raise a very interesting point, and I completely agree that predictions should be given much less importance. But, as you say, it is human nature to trust people who look confident, and therefore predictions do hold weight and a lot of people abuse that.
I disagree about promises though, I believe if you promise to (not) do something and then break that promise, you should be held accountable for it. Otherwise, people will keep promising more and more outlandish things, because you eliminate the downside.
Agreed. It's absolutely reasonable for a politician (for example) to get into power and discover that for some reason they can't do the thing they promised to do, but I'd love it if they'd just briefly say so and why, rather than brushing it under the carpet and assuming noone will remember what they said while they were campaigning.
"I know I said I'd increase funding for schools by 20%, but that budget is controlled by local authorities rather than by my office - I'm going to increase funding to local authorities by X% instead and ask them to fund schools" - that kind of thing (although, you know, you'd hope they'd know about the funding infrastructure before making promises).
Good point. I would say that even if we know how funding works we cannot predict the future. We do not know what circumstances will prevail at the time actions/decisions need to be made. With the best of intentions it is still possible to have to renege on a promise made. My argument is don't make promises. But even where they are made we should just read them as a general statement of intent. As an example a certain government promised to conduct 100,000 covid-19 tests per day by a certain deadline. When the deadline hit they only got as far as 80,000+ or so. They got hammered for failing to meet the target. But I'm thinking yes they missed the target but we're a lot better off than when the promise was made. If they hadn't made any promise and achieved the same result the press might have celebrated it (probably not).
I disagree about promises though, I believe if you promise to (not) do something and then break that promise, you should be held accountable for it. Otherwise, people will keep promising more and more outlandish things, because you eliminate the downside.