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it is absolutely true that

earthquake are unpredictable? in chinese, some people say 地震不可预测. the chinese sentence is quite vague and puzzling. does it mean that no matter how you try, and  no matter how long you try, say 1000 years or 5000 years more, you can never understand why earthquakes happen and how they happen and it is absolutely impossible to make any kind of forecast no matter how science is advanced? the chinese language  does have this confusing  function and  that's why one chinese  sentence can be construed in several ways and sometimes new interpretations are quite contradictary. in my opinion,  earthquakes are predictable. even if we can't do that today,  maybe in 100 years or 1000 years, we humans can do it. we humans can do much more than we could 100 years or 200 years ago in understanding earthquakes. we humans have developed methods to pinpoint epicenters, measure magnitudes, forecast aftershocks, define whether major aftershocks will happen, etc. this is progress. this may not mean much,  since we humans have failed again and again to make a major accurate forecast. but don't equal our failures to agnosticism.

things can be known under certain circumstances and with proper tools. stargazers are now looking into the universe and making startling discoveries and new observations are coming forth almost every day. with advanced apparatus and more understanding, humans can know more about earthquakes and probably in near future we can make a forecast. it is ubsurd to conclude that we can't make any progress in the issue of forecasting earthquakes.  

a few forecasts have been made in the past and they were almost accurate. but compared to the huge number of earthquakes that caught us off pants, the successful forecasts can be dismissed as exceptions. scientists do not wish to play up the importance of the few success, for they are not certain they can do it next time and they do not want to get blamed if they fail to repeat their success.