Thanks for your candid response, Cathryn. I certainly hope your headache is gone now, and that I didn't cause it! I'll try to address your points in the order you wrote them.

You find my attitude about predictors "a tad harsh." Fair enough - I occasionally think so, too. And I'm also aware that I'm possibly wrong.

Succesful predictions do not counter, in any way, either of my contentions - that the nucleation process is chaotic (and, hence, inherently unpredictable), or the more general opinion that no practical earthquake prediction scheme can be developed. Only a sizeable number of predictions, carefully documented, subjected to rigorous mathematical analysis and resulting in a high level of significance could do that. You allude to that, yourself. The Efficient Market Theory of the stock market generally states that the market, and its individual company shares, are correctly valued at all times, and that, consequently, absent insider knowledge, nobody can predict the future performance of any share price any better than anybody else can. However, the theory itself clearly predicts that individual prognosticators will, over various periods of time, greatly outperform the market. No contradiction. Simply an inescapable part of the Law of large numbers.

As for yours' and others' psychic experiences, I am not completely closed-minded there. My older sister and my mother, when they were alive, recounted an inexplicable event regarding the near-drowning of my brother which Mom suddenly became aware of a half-mile down the beach. Neither my sister or my mother was the type that were taken to flights of fancy, and no other such experiences were ever related to me. I just have nothing really to say on the subject of such unrepeatable phenomena - other than to suggest that those who claim some sort of ongoing psychic ability have been given many chances to demonstrate it, and are consistent only in their abject failure.

I agree that this is a prediction board, and do not see my posts as being an attempt to stifle any discussion of same. On the other hand, I don't see the necessity to "encourage" predictors, based on my own beliefs, and I think that it mischaracterizes my post to imply that I state all predictors are "delusional" (or self-aggrandizing). Delusional is simply too strong a word. I think they generally are simply mistaken about the predictability of earthquakes and how modern science works.

I've beaten this subject to death here, lately, but your heartfelt post called for a response. I'll be joining you in descending from our respective soapboxes now.

Michael Williams
Arroyo Grande, CA USA