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Hindsight is always twenty-twenty

Posted by Platypus on July 23, 2004

In Reply to: Hindsight is always twenty-twenty posted by al on July 23, 2004

: : : Can you guys tell me the origin of this idiom?Actually I'm not sure if it's an idiom. I picked it up from a web .I forgot to copy the context.

: : This comes from eye testing. Perfect vision is defined as 20/20. Thus, hindsight, which produces 'perfect' vision of the past, can be so described.

: I find it curious that this phrase which is [b]so often used[/b], especially by persons talking, is so factually incorrect. As a matter of fact hindsight is only occasionally 'perfect'. Often hindsight somewhat better than foresight but hindsight it only occasionally approaches 'perfect'.

I wish we could put this moronic aphorism to bed forever. It is cliche and fallacious. Anyone who witnessed the love-fest during the Reagan memorials knows that hindsight is clearly an epileptic drunk wearing Coke bottle glasses. Only a severe visual impairment could obscure the images of hundreds of thousands of Guatemalan, El Salvadorian, and Nicaruaguan corpses and see only a benevolent grandfather figure. May I suggest "hindsight is an ass" to replace the worn-out cliche 20/20 bit.

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