Chicken Guts Predict The Future

Why Beliefs Are Self Fulfilling

August 07, 2025

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“It is a paradox that in our time of drastic rapid change, when the future is in our midst devouring the present before our eyes, we have never been less certain about what is ahead of us. Our need for predictability is far more urgent than in times past and we are addicted to forecasters and pollsters. Even when the forecasts are wrong we go on asking for them. We watch our experts read their graphs the way the ancients watched their soothsayers read the entrails of a chicken.” -Eric Hoffer

In ancient Rome, a Haruspex was a religious figure that inspected and predicted the future based on the intestines of a sacrificed animal. Alexander the Great was known for relying heavily on haruspicy.

Now it would be easy to throw on our 21st century lenses and say this is a crazy practice, but when was the last time you conquered the known world? Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. Or throw the chicken guts out with the ashes? Not sure if that will catch on.

The chicken liver readings were never real, however the confidence it instilled was. In medicine, we have the placebo effect where patients see positive impacts to their health while taking sugar pills purely because their expectation is that it will benefit them. Your beliefs in what will happen can actually be more important than the tools we use to predict what will happen.

Maybe staring at that chicken carcass would do you some good.

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