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Contrarianism:When you presume that the opposing outcome is more likely, you are taking the ěcontrarianî view. In short, contrarianism is believing that the unlikely will likely occur.
Contrarianism is useful because, despite manís efforts at predicting the future, events are constantly running contrary to his best forecasts. Three major factors cause forecasters to predict events that never occur: pride, fear, and greed.
- Pride
Men have always sought to unveil the future. Predicting the future, many believe, will cause them to gain a supernatural quality. Pride causes men to go beyond the limits of good reasoning and predict things that are unlikely to occur. Fear
For the most part, fear confuses people's better judgment. It causes them to overstate the dangers and it causes the majority to hold on to the status quo. Further, the fear of losing wealth or status induces some people to make dire predictions.Greed
When individuals intensely desire an outcome, they often manufacture the means by which that outcome can be realized. The level of their greed generally indicates the extremity of their prognostications.
Although the unreliability of man's prognostications about the future would cause some to pause, contrarians can use that unreliability as a productive forecasting tool. By simply taking the opposite viewpoint, contrarians are better able to grasp events that are yet to occur.
Contrarianism does have its limitations. Sometimes events happen just as man expected, and sometimes events transpire in ways that are different from the positive and the opposite expectancy. Contrarian thinking, however, can be a more reliable tool in forecasting events.
