hard to foresee, but easy to predict

Is this not a way of saying that general trends are foreseeable but specific events are unpredictable.

eg we can say that mankind is likely to get richer as technology develops but we can't say who will invent the next gizmo and when.

zashibis said
Pretentious twaddle+ and then said this +The author is striving after a rhetorical flourish but failing miserably

That made me laugh but I have a feeling it wasn't meant as a joke.

##19 and 20

Is this not a way of saying that general trends are foreseeable but specific events are unpredictable.

That may be what the author intended to say, but that's not a distinction conveyed by any nuance between foresee and predict.

You could just as easily say that general trends are predictable but specific events are unforeseeable.

As I said at #13.

#21 -- You think the phrase "rhetorical flourish" is pretentious twaddle? What phrase would you have used to convey zashibis's intended meaning? I think rhetorical flourish conveys his meaning exactly, unlike the pretentious twaddle that OP quoted.

Yeah Vinny but my reading is that the author used two different words for the same thing purely to avoid repetition and wasn't trying to create a nuanced distinction between foresight and prediction but between trends and events. THis is an example of what Bill Bryson calls synonymitis and - as this example shows - is right to condemn.

#23 -- That can't be. I think you need to look at #9. That's not supposed to be a hyphen between predict and events, it's supposed to be a dash. He says that the course of history is easy to foresee but hard to predict. Then he says that events tend to be man-made.

mathilda, by the way, that's usually represented in typing with two hyphens -- with a space between them.

mathilda, by the way, that's usually represented in typing with two hyphens -- with a space between them.

interesting i'll know in the future; in the original it is one very long hyphen;

Since computer keyboards don't have long hyphens, two hyphens -- can be used instead. If you do this in, e.g., Word, the -- is replaced automatically by one long hyphen.

(Just to add to Vinny's "with a space between them": there is a bit of space between them, as you can see, but when you type it, you hit hyphen-hyphen, not hyphen-space-hyphen.)

shilgia's right. I meant to say: with a space between the preceding word and the double hyphen, and a space between the double hyphen and the following word.

one very long hyphen

"Hyphen" is usually used just for the short one, joining parts of a compound-word. "Dash" is used for the longer one -- joining, or separating, parts of a sentence.

ok interesting