2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/163405Gott has promulgated a rule for making probabilistic predictions of the future duration of a phenomenon based on the phenomenon's present age [Nature, Vol. 363, 315 (1993)]. I show that the two usual methods for deriving Gott's rule are flawed. Nothing licenses indiscriminate use of Gott's rule as a predictor of future duration. It should only be used when the phenomenon in question has no identifiable time scales.This paper is being posted to the archive as it seeks a home for publicationAstrophysicsGeneral Relativity and Quantum CosmologyData Analysis, Statistics and ProbabilityPopular Physicstext