to go from kid in school to fully fledged scientist

[Alexey86]

No. The verb is in the past simple. That means that both the expectation and the prediction happened in the past. At some point in the past, you either expected or predicted something.

Today is Wednesday. If I say, "Yesterday, I predicted they would arrive on Friday", the prediction happened in the past, but the event itself has yet to happen. If I say, "On Monday, I predicted they would arrive on Tuesday", both the prediction and the event happened in the past.

Change this to will have expected or predicted and you shift the time frame. Now you're saying that at some point in the past, an expectation or prediction will happen in a time that is in the future with respect to that time.

Now, I feel totally lost. This sounds to me as if you mix up an expectation as a state of mind with an event that is expected. You say "will have expected" means "an expectation will happen...", but "will have expected" is just a state of mind. It is the event that will happen, not the state of mind. Correct me if I got you wrong.

 

[Alexey86]

It's still not clear to me in what sense "And there will have been many people out there who were curious ..." or, speaking more generally, "will have been/done" can be a prediction of the past. Let's consider several examples with timelines including two referent points: the moment of speaking (SM), the event time (ET):

1) I will have done it by the evening. It's a prediction of a future event.

SM------------------>ET

2) I predicted he would have done it by the 5 p.m. I'm not sure whether it's a prediction of the past or just its description, but anyway, we use "would" here, not "will".

a) ET1 (prediction time)------SM (4 p.m.)-------->ET2 (would have done). Maybe I should use "will" here?

b) ET1 -----ET2-------->SM (6 p.m.)

3) She will not have minded much when Kenneth Clarke was picked up on a microphone this week calling her a “bloody difficult woman”.

(https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/336490/future-perfect-will-for-past-events) It's not a prediction. The epistemic "will" is used to express a conjecture or certainty regarding the past.

ET1 (was picked up on a micro)----ET2 (will not have minded)--------->SM

None of these three example uses "will have done" to express a prediction of the past. Maybe I'm missing something, and there is a possibility for using "will have been/done" to express such a prediction, for example in (2a).

 

[jutfrank]

The thread is getting a little hard to follow. Let's deal with one question at a time.

1) I will have done it by the evening. It's a prediction of a future event.

Correct.

2) I predicted he would have done it by the 5 p.m. I'm not sure whether it's a prediction of the past or just its description, but anyway, we use "would" here, not "will".

Right—this is not a prediction. It's a statement about a prediction. It's important not to mix those up.

a) ET1 (prediction time)------SM (4 p.m.)-------->ET2 (would have done). Maybe I should use "will" here?

b) ET1 -----ET2-------->SM (6 p.m.)

For a), use will.

3) She will not have minded much when Kenneth Clarke was picked up on a microphone this week calling her a “bloody difficult woman”.

(https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/336490/future-perfect-will-for-past-events) It's not a prediction. The epistemic "will" is used to express a conjecture or certainty regarding the past.

Fine. Call it conjecture then, but this is what I'm calling a prediction about a past event.

None of these three example uses "will have done" to express a prediction of the past. Maybe I'm missing something, and there is a possibility for using "will have been/done" to express such a prediction, for example in (2a).

It seems that the source of the confusion stems from what we mean by 'prediction of the past'. If it helps you understand, call it 'conjecture'.

 

[Alexey86]

I predicted he would have done it by the 5 p.m.

It's a typo. I was thinking about "evening" when writing that.

The thread is getting a little hard to follow.

Now that you've clarified the source of the confusion, we can end this thread. Thank you!

 

[probus]

The future perfect tenses are one of the illogical quirks of English, Alexey86. It is not hard to think of situations where logic seems to call for a future perfect tense. Nevertheless they rarely appear in actual usage. They are not wrong if you choose to use them in such situations but native speakers often do not, and logic be d*mned.;-)

I believe that this is not the case in many other languages including Russian.