Examples If an economic crisis is predicted, then consumers, manufacturers and authorities will respond to avoid economic loss, breaking the chain of events that would lead to crisis. The biblical prophet Jonah famously ran away and refused to deliver God's prophecy of Nineveh's destruction, from Book of Jonah lest the inhabitants repent and cause God to forgive them and not destroy the city. Indeed, when Jonah eventually does deliver the prophecy, the people do mend their ways and cause the prophecy not to happen. The Year 2000 problem was claimed to be an example of a self-defeating prophecy, in that fear of massive technology failures caused by computers' internal clocks "rolling over" encouraged the very changes needed to avoid those failures. Pre-announcing products in a way that discourages current sales (the Osborne effect) is also an example of a self-defeating prophecy. Predictions of environmental issues are sometimes corrected via legislation or behavior change and thus never happen. Epidemics with grim projections also encourage changes that can prevent those projections from coming true and in turn lead to people questioning these changes because the projections did not come true.
Examples If an economic crisis is predicted, then consumers, manufacturers and authorities will respond to avoid economic loss, breaking the chain of events that would lead to crisis. The biblical prophet Jonah famously ran away and refused to deliver God's prophecy of Nineveh's destruction, from Book of Jonah lest the inhabitants repent and cause God to forgive them and not destroy the city. Indeed, when Jonah eventually does deliver the prophecy, the people do mend their ways and cause the prophecy not to happen. The Year 2000 problem has been cited as a self-defeating prophecy, in that fear of massive technology failures caused by computers' internal clocks "rolling over" encouraged the very changes needed to avoid those failures. Pre-announcing products in a way that discourages current sales (the Osborne effect) is also an example of a self-defeating prophecy. Predictions of environmental issues are sometimes corrected via legislation or behavior change and thus never happen. Epidemics with grim projections also encourage changes that can prevent those projections from coming true and in turn lead to people questioning these changes because the projections did not come true.
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