Post History can't be used to predict the future, but it can be used to predict the past.

A little food for thought. In a previous life I worked in the financial markets in risk management. In a nutshell this meant the powers that be trusted me to make sure that their money wasn't lost by the gamblers (literally) trading derivatives. So I would sit there, day in, day out and work hard to make the powers that be richer. As with any industry you learn a thing or two, and I learned a lot. But one of the most interesting was that market crashes are completely unpredictable, especially the more history you look at.<br><br>Post history can't be used to predict the future, but it can be used to predict the past. In short the more variables you take away, the more defined the outcome is. The more variables you add, the more chaotic it is. And if there is one thing that is chaotic, it is humanity. Hundreds of millions of us, over billions of years with more variables than we count. The human species is chaotic. The more historical data you get, the more you understand how chaotic it is.<br><br>History over centuries can't be used to predict the future. It's too chaotic. Take the current political and social climate of North America over the last 240 years or so. Maybe with a few more years of education and history the powers that be can predict the next 4 years or decade or so, but no more. Take North Korea, or China, or Russia or even Brazil over the last century or so. Maybe they can predict with a few more years of history what will happen in the next few years, but no more. The more you zoom in, the more variables there are. If you zoom in on a North Korean, they can probably predict what they will do with a few more years of data, but they still can't predict what they will have for dinner in 3 years, or if it will be raining the day they visit their grandmothers house in 2 years, or if their brother will break up with his partner or not, or what they will say in a conversation. It's chaotic. The more data you get, the less you know.<br><br>But over the last 240 years, North America has crashed three times. Maybe 4 depending on who you ask. It crashed in 1776, it crashed in 1860 and it crashed in 2008. What does the future hold? No one knows.