Preface: On Prophecy and the Search for Certainty in an Age of Reflexive Time
Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI
From an award-winning University of Oxford professor comes a brilliant, urgent new look at prophecies--the predictions that determine our lives, from our personal finances and the quality of our healthcare to the news and social media we consume and the produces foisted upon us
Debunking “When Prophecy Fails”
ABSTRACT In 1954, Dorothy Martin predicted an apocalyptic flood and promised her followers rescue by flying saucers. When neither arrived, she recanted, her group dissolved, and efforts to proselytize ceased. But When Prophecy Fails (1956), the now‐canonical account of the event, claimed the opposite: that the group doubled down on its beliefs and began recruiting—evidence, the authors argued, of a new psychological mechanism, cognitive dissonance. Drawing on newly unsealed archival material, this article demonstrates that the book's central claims are false, and that the authors knew they were false. The documents reveal that the group actively proselytized well before the prophecy failed and quickly abandoned their beliefs afterward. They also expose serious ethical violations by the researchers, including fabricated psychic messages, covert manipulation, and interference in a child welfare investigation. One coauthor, Henry Riecken, posed as a spiritual authority and later admitted he had “precipitated” the climactic events of the study.
How are we writing the future of humanity?
Consciousness spinning
The Great Reckoning - The Ideas Letter
The world feels unsettled, as if history itself were changing tempo. The familiar landmarks of the modern age are blurring, slipping away, and the stories we once told ourselves about…
The Great Reckoning - The Ideas Letter
The world feels unsettled, as if history itself were changing tempo. The familiar landmarks of the modern age are blurring, slipping away, and the stories we once told ourselves about…
To Make Sense of the Present, Brains May Predict the Future | Quanta Magazine
A controversial theory suggests that perception, motor control, memory and other brain functions all depend on comparisons between ongoing actual experiences and the brain’s modeled expectations.
Neuralink and the Brain's Magical Future — Wait But Why
I knew the future would be shocking but this is a whole other level.
Izabella Kaminska on Twitter / X
The problem of our time is not merely information overload. It is that the time required to construct a coherent understanding of reality is becoming longer than the time during which that understanding remains valid.— Izabella Kaminska (@izakaminska) October 16, 2026
The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess: Where Do We Go From Here?
This is a long article, so I've broken it up into a series of posts, listed below. You can also read the full work as a PDF or EPUB.
Sermon 2026-01-11
Epiphany Observed 2026
AI Predictions, Big and Small
A compilation of ideas and writing where there is some prediction of the future so that we can look back one day and compare.
056. Ephesians 3:1-12
Epiphany • Ephesians 3:1–12 • January 6, 2013 - Concordia Theology
First Impressions on Ephesians 3:1-12 - Without Authority
Epiphany • Ephesians 3:1–12 • January 4, 2015 - Concordia Theology
Mustafa Suleyman: My new Turing test would see if AI can make $1 million
AI 2040: Plan A
AI 2027
Dean W. Ball on Twitter / X
Dean W. Ball on Twitter / X
OpenAI drops a bomb on maths
