Exaggerating a visible trend is a method, and methods produce repeatable hits

The argument

A second argument for this position concerns repeatability. If the apparent predictions were accidents, proponents hold, they would not cluster, because accidents do not favour particular writers, particular programmes or particular subjects. The clustering is better explained by a method that reliably produces hits, and the method in question is not obscure. It consists of looking hard at the present, identifying what is already moving, and extending it past the point of absurdity. The argument emphasises that this method is deliberately indifferent to probability. A satirist exaggerating a trend is not asking what is likely but what would be ridiculous, and the ridiculous version of a real tendency is simply that tendency carried further. Because tendencies tend to continue, the ridiculous version is frequently where things end up. The comedy and the forecast are produced by the same operation, which is why the hits arrive as a steady stream rather than as isolated flukes. Proponents conclude that the interesting lesson is about forecasting rather than about the show. If a comic method applied for the sake of jokes outperforms the general run of commentary, the implication is that the general run of commentary is overcautious. Forecasters who hedge, who demand evidence before naming a direction, and who treat continuation as a bold claim will systematically fall behind a method that assumes continuation and exaggerates it. On this reading the series was not unusually gifted at seeing the future. It was unusually willing to say out loud where the present was heading, because saying so was funny rather than risky, and that willingness is the whole of the advantage.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics of this argument hold that it assumes the clustering it needs to explain. Whether the apparent predictions really are concentrated in one body of work, rather than merely collected there by enthusiasts, is exactly the question at issue, and no comparative count across programmes has been offered. They also object that the method described is not reliably forecasting anything, because exaggerating a trend yields a direction without a magnitude or a date, and a claim with neither can be matched to events generously enough to look successful in almost any outcome. A further objection is that the argument makes the success too cheap. If assuming continuation and exaggerating it were an advantage available for free, forecasters who are rewarded for accuracy would already use it, and critics contend that the reason they do not is that trends also reverse, stall and invert in ways the method cannot register.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Critics hold that the argument assumes the clustering it sets out to explain, since no comparative count across programmes has ever been offered. [Rejecting P2] Exaggerating a tendency yields a direction with no magnitude and no date, and such a claim can be matched generously to almost any outcome. [Rejecting P3] If the method were a free advantage, forecasters rewarded for accuracy would already use it, and they do not because tendencies also stall, reverse and invert. [Rejecting C] What is described is a way of generating striking claims rather than a method with demonstrated predictive reliability.