It is widely believed bu skeptics that the "accuracy" of Nostradaums' predictions is due to their vagueness. His predictions were in the form of quatrains (4 line verses) that were sparse on details or specifics. This allows meaning to be in the eye of the beholder.

For example, the following quatrain is believed by followers of Nostradamus to have predicted the 1986 Challenger space shuttle

    From the human flock nine will be sent away,
    Separated from judgment and counsel:
    Their fate will be sealed on departure
    Kappa, Thita, Lambda the banished dead err (I.81).

It seems to fit the events, but anything that vague will inevitably describe many events from the fullness of history.

Yes, his predictions are vague, and I would say deliberately so. Nostradamus was more fraud than prophet. If he knew the future, why didn't he just state concretely what was going to happen?

I don't think we can call him an outright fraud. Unlike most prophets, he wasn't necessarily knowingly promulgating falsehoods. He simply created predictions that were highly open to interpretation and let his readers fill in the blanks.

Maybe he couldn't state things concretely because he did not understand his visions himself. He could only document them.

I think he was legit. He was even recognized as a prophet in his own time. He was given credit for predicting how his king, Henri II of France, would die (he wrote of a pierced eye, the fatal injury that Henri received in a jousting match).

He was a fraud, pure and simple.

A big part of the "success" of Nostradamus' predictions was mistranslated. Translators have a lot of latitude is how they translate these 16th century french texts.

Here are translations of the same quatrain done by two different translators:

Cheetham's version:

Beasts wild with hunger will cross the rivers,
The greater part of the battle will be against Hitler.
He will cause great men to be dragged in a cage of iron,
When the son of Germany obeys no law.

Randi's version:

Beasts mad with hunger will swim across rivers,
Most of the army will be against the Lower Danube.
The great one shall be dragged in an iron cage
When the child brother will observe nothing.

We have the same problem with Nostradamus as we do with any other person claiming the power of prophecy. Namely, why didn't he use his advance knowledge of the future to make himself rich, or King, or whatever.

Just like how fortune tellers/psychics choose not to get the winning lottery numbers from the great beyond and buy a ticket.

He just got too many things right to be a faker.

It's true that his predictions are vague, but some of them have specifics, like the one that mentions Hitler (it says Hister, but that's pretty close).

If his predictions were false, what was his motivation for predicting things that won't happen in his lifetime? How could he have benefited if people 100s of years after his death can find events that match his prophesies in modern times?

NO WAY!!!! It's all just a big scam!

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He probably sold a lot of books. That might have been a motivation.

Why is it so hard for people to believe that things we can't explain by science may be true? There are still huge gaps in our understanding of the universe.

Believing in prophecy means abandoning many scientifically proven things that we KNOW are true.

How did he make his predictions? Did he have some kind of a technique?

Biographer Peter Lemesurier concluded that Nostradamus "believed that history repeats itself" and used the technique of projecting past events onto the future in order to make realistic-sounding claims.

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Nostradamus's reputation as a prophet was largely manufactured by modern day supporters who fit his words to events that have already occurred or are so imminent as to be inevitable. This is process known as "retroactive clairvoyance".

Some of his predictions are pretty convincing. Here's a great site with the top ones:

https://www.businessinsider.com/predictions-of-nostradamus-2011-12#charles-de-gaulle-6

He was also an astrologist. What does that tell you about his veracity as a knower to truth?

Some accounts of Nostradamus's life state that he was afraid of being persecuted for heresy by the Inquisition, but neither prophecy nor astrology fell in this bracket, and he would have been in danger only if he had practiced magic to support them. In 1538 he came into conflict with the Church in Agen after an Inquisitor visited the area looking for anti-Catholic views.[34] His brief imprisonment at Marignane in late 1561 was solely because he had violated a recent royal decree by publishing his 1562 almanac without the prior permission of a bishop.

Not a chance. It's all just BS crackpottery cooked up by people who want to believe there is order in the world.

This is probably one of his most famous predictions. It is believed to predict the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Near the gates and within two cities
There will be scourges the like of which was never seen,
Famine within plague, people put out by steel,
Crying to the great immortal God for relief.

If his predictions were legit, then what does that say about free will? If he could predict the future hundreds of years in advance, then it doesn't seem that people have much control over their destinies.

I wonder what Nostradamus's view on free will was?

Here's one purported to predict the assassination of JFK.

    The great man will be struck down in the day by a thunderbolt,
    An evil deed foretold by the bearer of a petition.
    According to the prediction, another falls at night time.
    Conflict at Reims, London and a pestilence in Tuscany.

What does the assassination of JFK have to do with Tuscany or London?

There were charlatans in the 1400s just like there are today. He was just one of them.

Maybe not, though. I don't think people sold a lot of books back then. Most people were illiterate.

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From wikipedia:

Given this reliance on literary sources, it is unlikely that Nostradamus used any particular methods for entering a trance state, other than contemplation, meditation and incubation. His sole description of this process is contained in letter 41 of his collected Latin correspondence.[52] The popular legend that he attempted the ancient methods of flame gazing, water gazing or both simultaneously is based on a naive reading of his first two verses, which merely liken his efforts to those of the Delphic and Branchidic oracles.

The first of these is reproduced at the bottom of this article and the second can be seen by visiting the relevant facsimile site (see External Links). In his dedication to King Henri II, Nostradamus describes "emptying my soul, mind and heart of all care, worry and unease through mental calm and tranquility", but his frequent references to the "bronze tripod" of the Delphic rite are usually preceded by the words "as though" (compare, once again, External References to the original texts).

He was the real deal.

What about the things he DIDN'T predict. Like the internet or global warming, or whatever.

Yeah and he didnt predict his own death and avoid it!

He died of gout. How do predict that? and even if you do, what do you do about it?

The things he didn't predict (i.e. internet, global warming)? That's just because someone hasn't found an interpretation that works (yet) for any of these things. Just give them time.

Are you making a prediction? (Get it?)

It's weird how people believe in this stuff. It's clearly just some guy writing poems that are deliberately vague.

People fell for it then, just like now.

Scholars have pointed out that almost all English translations of Nostradamus's quatrains are of extremely poor quality, seem to display little or no knowledge of 16th-century French, are tendentious, and are sometimes intentionally altered in order to make them fit whatever events the translator believed they were supposed to refer (or vice versa)

Quote from Nostradamus:

Although, my son, I have used the word prophet, I would not attribute to myself a title of such lofty sublimity.

...not something a person trying to deceive the world into believing in him would say.

Nostradamus claimed to base his published predictions on judicial astrology—the astrological 'judgment', or assessment, of the 'quality' (and thus potential) of events such as births, weddings, coronations etc.—but was heavily criticized by professional astrologers of the day such as Laurens Videl for incompetence and for assuming that "comparative horoscopy" (the comparison of future planetary configurations with those accompanying known past events) could actually predict what would happen in the future.

TOTALLY BOGUS

Oh, it's all based on astrology. That makes me much more convinced it's not all crap.

The vagueness of his predictions and lack of dating make it easy to quote them selectively after every major dramatic event and retrospectively claim them as "hits".

He was also a diviner - another dubious belief system.

It has been suggested that he may have used bibliomancy for this—randomly (choosing a book of history and taking his cue from whatever page it happened to fall open at)