Block Test 2 General Paper

Question: To what extent can a close study of the past accurately predict the future?

Human beings are, arguably, the most inquisitive creatures on the planet. We just simply cannot resist the urge to explore terrains and landscapes, to eavesdrop on people's conversations or to examine the behaviours of molecules and atoms. Each of us, being unique and different from each other, are curious to find out more in different areas. But one particular are unites all of us -- the future. We never fail to be mesmerized and marvelled by the future since time immemorial. This mysterious object has enticed people across continents and countries, race and religion to come up with ways to, apprehensively yet inquisitively, unravel its mystery, one of which is through a close study of the past to, hopefully, identify some patterns or unique traits among the cases studied to predict the future. However, one does not always benefit from hindsight and just like the "golden rule" in Science, extrapolation is hardly accurate or conclusive.

Proponents of the above method to predict the future more often than not cite the phrase "the benefit of hindsight" to support their claim that a close study of the past can accurately predict the future. They believe that examining occurrences in the past in detail would allow us to spot common characteristics or identify obvious patterns, which can then be used to predict the future. Indeed, past events and experiences can be used, especially in meteorology and geology, to extrapolate into the future. By detailed inspection of the behaviour of the El Nino and the La Nina phenomena, meteorologists are able to predict the weather changes and patterns for tropical countries across the globe, and thus issuing relevant warnings for people who are at risk of being caught in a torrentious typhoon or a ferocious flood. Geologists were also able to come up with a time frame for when the IstanBul earthquake would happen in 1999 after they discovered that the epicentres for earthquakes in Turkey over the past century had been advancing in a north-eastern direction and these earthquakes occurred periodically with common intervals between each occurrence.

Yet, the above-mentioned events are merely isolated cases. (Comments: even the meteorological one?) Thus far, a majority of weather changes and movements of the tectonic plates remain unpredictable. More of than not, we complain about the inaccurate weather forecast for causing us to be caught in an unexpected downpour. Cases of false alarms are often reported in the news when the relevant institutions issued out inaccurate predictions for an "approaching" tidal wave. Furthermore, the study of patterns can only be used to explain scientific phenomena, but what about the human behaviour?

If you take a close look at the leaders of every nation, you would hardly be able to come up with a conclusive statement to predict whether or not Hilary Clinton will become America's first female President. Nor can you predict whether or not the son of current Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Long will follow his father's footsteps to continue the legacy of the Lee family in leading Singapore towards greater heights. Moreover, a close look at all the Prime Ministers of Britain would show no concrete evidence indicating that Margaret Thatcher would become Britain's first female Prime Minister, for throughout the few hundred years of Britain's history, only men became the Prime Minister for the nation. Hence, the studying of the past is not accurate in predicting the future leaders. (Comments: What are you looking at exactly? The gender? Characteristics? Why can't we predict the leaders?)

Examine World War Two now. When World War One ended, certainly no one would have expected another war of such a massive scale would occur less than twenty years down the road. Scholars at that time probably would have analysed the causes of World War One, but they certainly did not identify the factor that would trigger the outbreak of a second global war. Had a close study of World War One been useful, they would have accurately predicted that World War Two would occur and perhaps there would be less blooshed then, less grievances now. Besides, if one studied the occurrences of the two world wars, one would have predicted that a third global war would take place twenty years after the second, since there is a twenty-year time interval between the first and the second. Yet, there was no global war twenty years after World War Two during the 1960s, hence a close study of the past is inconclusive to determine exactly when a next global war would happen, and thus far, no one on this planet (unless one possess supernatural forces, whose ability I am dubious about) can confidently announce to the world when World War Three will occur, or if it will in the first place.

Economics is the study of human behaviour when it comes to trading. The father of Economics, Adam Smith, had spent years of his life studying how people responded accordingly to market changes in his attempt to come up with models that would allow people to predict the outcomes of various market changes. He did propose several models eventually, but upon a detailed examination, one would spot that Smith's proposals are highly idealised and impractical in the forecast of outcomes of market changes in this complex world. As such, his models lose credibility as well as accuracy despite his close study of numerous events and occurrences in the past. Arguably, Smith's proposal allow people to predict the future, but on the assumptions that the human society is simplistic and that all things are equal, ceterus paribus. With all these limitations, how can one then accurately predict the future outcomes of market changes in this complex world?

Bringing this issue to a microscopic level, students taking the Cambridge 'O'-Levels and 'A'-Levels Examinations in Singapore, more often than not, attempt to "spot" questions by observing the trends of past-year papers. They do so through identifying a common trend in the type of questions being asked, or through eliminating the type of questions that were asked previously, all to predict the types of questions that may appear in their upcoming examinations. However, the two methods of "spotting questions" contradict each other and one certainly would not be able to allow both schools of thought to co-exist harmoniously in one's mind. As such, one of the methods must be inaccurate. Yet, both methods were developed based on detailed studies done on past-year questions and it is indeed ironic that two vastly different and opposing methods can be proposed based on a common action. Students belonging to neither schools of thought find both methods useful, but only to a very limited extent since only a few questions can be predicted using either ways. As such, how can there be a way to accurately predict future questions in examinations based on a close study of past-year questions? With two contrasting methods emerging, it shows that there is no one accurate method of predicitng the future.

In conclusion, a close study of the past may be helpful, but certainly to a limited and small extent. People, perhaps, can at most use past events or experiences as a guide or reference, but certainly we cannot rely on them totally. SHould we wish to extrapolate into the future based on studies of the past, restrictions and assumptions would have to be imposed and this lowers the credibility and accuracy of the method significantly.

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Score:
Content: 19/30
Language: 14/20
Total: 33/50

Tutor's Comments: Terence, you started out quite brilliantly but you seemed to have digressed slightly towards the end. You also tend to focus more on the examples than the argument. In fact, at times, I cannot find an argument in your paragraph that answers the question! Please refrain from committing these mistakes again!