She professed to be able to raise thunderstorms, though her seeming success was generally laid to some uncanny knack at prediction.

She did not trust her instincts, her untrained abilities at prediction.

Still, the striking contrast between the concreteness of Starr's descriptions and the uncertainties about China's future highlights a troublesome contradiction that bedevils any attempt at prediction.

And it eludes any attempts at prediction or control.

In particular such attempts at prediction are bedevilled by what Dingwall (1989) calls firstly the 'definitional fallacy' and secondly 'the statistical fallacy'.

Others have said that cognitivism is behaviorism with a new language, slightly bent model and new concerns which aim at description, prediction and control of behavior.

Futurists have a decidedly mixed reputation and a patchy track record at successful prediction.

An attempt at prediction, like that outlined above, would now have little chance of success.

"Can we give up efforts at prediction and just passively wait for a big one?"

Some scientific efforts at prediction will always be defeated by the nature of Nature.