Predict future history

There is one in the future history. The good news is that we can learn from it. The bad news is that we rarely do this. That’s because the clearest lesson from the history of the future is that understanding the future is not necessarily very useful. But this has not stopped humans from trying.

take Peter Turchin’s famous prediction 2020. In 2010, he conducted a quantitative analysis of history, called climate dynamics, which allowed him to predict that the West will experience political chaos in ten years. Unfortunately, no one can act on this prophecy to prevent damage to American democracy. Of course, if they have one, Turchin’s prediction will be classified as a failed futures. This situation is not abnormal.

Rulers from Mesopotamia to Manhattan sought to understand the future in order to gain a strategic advantage—but time and time again they failed to explain it correctly, or they failed to understand the political motives or speculation of those who provided it Limitations. Often, they also choose to ignore the future that forces them to face disturbing facts. Even the technological innovations of the 21st century have failed to change these basic problems-after all, the results of computer programs are only as accurate as the input data.

There is an assumption that the more scientific the forecasting method, the more accurate the forecast. But this belief creates more problems than it solves, especially because it often ignores or excludes the diversity of life in human experience. Despite the promise of more accurate and smarter technologies, there is no reason to believe that more deployments of artificial intelligence in predictions will make predictions more useful than the entire history of mankind.

People grow Try to find out more about the shape of things in the future. Although these efforts are aimed at the same goal, they differ in several important aspects depending on time and space, the most obvious of which is methodology-namely, how Make predictions and explain them. Since the earliest civilization, the most important difference in this practice is the difference between an individual with the inherent talent or ability to predict the future and a system that provides rules for calculating the future. For example, the prophecies of oracles, shamans, and prophets depend on the ability of these people to enter other planes of existence and receive divine revelation. However, divination strategies such as astrology, palmistry, numerology, and tarot cards depend on practitioners’ mastery of systems based on complex theoretical rules (sometimes highly mathematical), and their ability to interpret and apply specific situations . Explain that dreams or witchcraft practice may be somewhere in between these two extremes, depending partly on innate abilities and partly on the expertise gained. There are many examples of past and present involving two strategies for predicting the future. Any Internet search for “dream interpretation” or “constellation calculation” will trigger millions of clicks.

In the last century, technology legitimized the latter method, because the development of IT (at least to some extent predicted by Moore’s Law) provided more powerful tools and systems for forecasting. In the 1940s, the simulation computer MONIAC ​​had to use actual water tanks and colored water pipes to simulate the British economy. By the 1970s, the Club of Rome could turn to World3 computer simulations to model the flow of energy through human and natural systems through key variables such as industrialization, environmental damage, and population growth. Its report, The limit of growth, Become a bestseller, although it has been continuously criticized for the core assumptions of the model and the quality of the input data.

At the same time, other forecasters no longer rely on technological advancements, but have turned to crowdsourced forecasting strategies for the future. For example, polls depend on something very simple-asking people what they plan to do or what they think will happen. Then it needs to be explained carefully, whether it is based on quantitative (such as voter will survey) or qualitative (such as RAND’s DELPHI technology) analysis. The latter strategy uses the wisdom of highly specific populations. Convening a panel of experts to discuss a given topic, this idea is likely to be more accurate than personal predictions.