prediction

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No small part of the life of psychiatrists (and other doctors, I suppose) is made up of writing papers and reports.  A rather astonishing part of this are reports that are supposed to predict other people’s behavior.

This is basically impossible.  I remember hearing and never forgetting, early in my training, a supposedly ironclad rule of behavior prediction.

“If they did it before, they will do it again.”

Sometimes it had slightly different forms, made to appear more authoritative. “Past behavior is the solidest predictor of future behavior.” Read more on Prediction and Propinquity…

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