Predicting the future

[Fawkes]

My "friend" posted this as his facebook status:
"Just found a timeline of the future on a year by year basis for the next 100 years. It's backed by futuristic probability, Moore's law of computers, scientific trends and math based algorithms."

Here's a link to it: http://www.futuretimeline.net/index.htm

My responses:
"all of which can and will be changed by something as simple as someone smoking a cigarette that causes a cell in their lung to mutate and kill them 20 years down the road"

"that's missing the point of what I'm saying though [he started talking about the likelihood of cancer being cured soon]. I was just using that as an example of how the slightest little action can have enormous implications that are totally unpredictable. Another example would be if I chose to drink a whole glass of water this morning or if I drank half of a glass. If I drank a whole glass, maybe I'd leave a minute later because I'd have to go to the bathroom, and that leaving a minute later could result in me being pushed onto subway tracks by some guy that wasn't there a minute before and being killed. That would have rippling, immeasurable ramifications. When combined with every single choice we all make on a daily basis, it shows the unpredictability of the future."

I'm pretty dead set on the impossibility of accurately predicting the future, but I'm curious as to whether there are any convincing arguments against my view on it.

[Taikand]

Theoretically, you can predict the future, you just need a computer powerful enough to simulate each and every particle in our Universe, so no we can't really predict it.
But look at science, science is important because it can predict things with a certain degree of accuracy.Of course it is not perfect but it work well enough for some upright monkeys to build the computer in front of you.

[red cat]

Theoretically, you can predict the future, you just need a computer powerful enough to simulate each and every particle in our Universe, so no we can't really predict it.
But look at science, science is important because it can predict things with a certain degree of accuracy.Of course it is not perfect but it work well enough for some upright monkeys to build the computer in front of you.

How will the computer simulate its own particles ? That is not possible even theoretically.

[Blackscare]

Fawkes you just wasted so much of my valuable time with that. :mad:


I could have been playing fallout or masturbating, but instead I just got really jealous of my future descendants. Pricks.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

My responses:
"all of which can and will be changed by something as simple as someone smoking a cigarette that causes a cell in their lung to mutate and kill them 20 years down the road"

The future is (or rather, will be) a part of history, and history is bigger than individuals, and this is increasingly so in a world consisting of billions of people. OK, so one computer researcher dies early of cancer, but what about the other one who experiences a long and healthy life thanks to a lucky roll of the genetic dice? What about all the other computer researchers whose lifespans don't deviate greatly from the norm?

History involves large numbers of people, and large numbers of people are statistically predictable - you won't get hard and fast forecasts, but you will notice significant shades of probability.


"that's missing the point of what I'm saying though [he started talking about the likelihood of cancer being cured soon]. I was just using that as an example of how the slightest little action can have enormous implications that are totally unpredictable. Another example would be if I chose to drink a whole glass of water this morning or if I drank half of a glass. If I drank a whole glass, maybe I'd leave a minute later because I'd have to go to the bathroom, and that leaving a minute later could result in me being pushed onto subway tracks by some guy that wasn't there a minute before and being killed. That would have rippling, immeasurable ramifications. When combined with every single choice we all make on a daily basis, it shows the unpredictability of the future."

The problem is that you're looking at things on an individual level, when in fact individual choices and actions smear out pretty quickly on the macro-level. Don't take this the wrong way, but your reasoning is similar to that of the quantum mystics who think that wave-particle duality means that we are all really just vibrations, or that the uncertainty principle means that observers affect the course of events. In both cases, the individual/quantum effects drown each other out in their conflicting noise, generating averages that appear coherent on the macroscale - trends in the case of history, objects as we percieve them in the case of physics.


I'm pretty dead set on the impossibility of accurately predicting the future, but I'm curious as to whether there are any convincing arguments against my view on it.

Predicting the future is always a risky business - for a start, short-term trends are often exaggerated while long-term trends are underestimated. Then there's always those confounding variables that predictions often miss out on - while Jules Verne envisioned submarines and trips to the Moon, he completely missed the electronic age and the Internet it gave birth to. But we still landed on the Moon and submarines are a reality - only that the world today would be very alien to Verne.

When it comes to the future, one maxim I think is worth remembering - the future is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine. This is not to say we won't intimate some details of what is to come; indeed, some events by their nature are very predictable. But the future you end up growing old in will be at once an alien and familiar place.

[Fawkes]

The future is (or rather, will be) a part of history, and history is bigger than individuals, and this is increasingly so in a world consisting of billions of people. OK, so one computer researcher dies early of cancer, but what about the other one who experiences a long and healthy life thanks to a lucky roll of the genetic dice? What about all the other computer researchers whose lifespans don't deviate greatly from the norm?


The problem is that you're looking at things on an individual level, when in fact individual choices and actions smear out pretty quickly on the macro-level.


It's bigger than individuals, but it is dictated by all the individuals that make up the 6+ billion population. The macro-level is made up of everything on the micro-level, all those little individual actions are what make up our overarching history.


What about all the other computer researchers whose lifespans don't deviate greatly from the norm?
What about some guy gets cut off and flicks off the person that cut him off. The person he just flicked off is an airline mechanic on his way to work at JFK. While working on some 747, he's in a bad mood sparked by the guy flicking him off, and in his absent-mindedness he forgets to tighten some bolt. Meanwhile, that plane is about to fly to some East Asian country, but as a result of the loosened bolt, it crashes in the Yellow Sea. This ignites an international crisis between the U.S. and China, nukes get launched, 1/4 of the Earth's population is dead. Sure, that may have just served as the impetus that sparked the actualization of an underlying tension, but had that guy not gotten flicked off on the way to work, things probably would have happened way differently.


Don't take this the wrong way, but your reasoning is similar to that of the quantum mystics who think that wave-particle duality means that we are all really just vibrations, or that the uncertainty principle means that observers affect the course of events. In both cases, the individual/quantum effects drown each other out in their conflicting noise, generating averages that appear coherent on the macroscale - trends in the case of history, objects as we percieve them in the case of physics.
I didn't really follow that too much, I'm not too up on physics, so I don't really have any background on which to respond to that.


Predicting the future is always a risky business - for a start, short-term trends are often exaggerated while long-term trends are underestimated. Then there's always those confounding variables that predictions often miss out on - while Jules Verne envisioned submarines and trips to the Moon, he completely missed the electronic age and the Internet it gave birth to. But we still landed on the Moon and submarines are a reality - only that the world today would be very alien to Verne.

When it comes to the future, one maxim I think is worth remembering - the future is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine. This is not to say we won't intimate some details of what is to come; indeed, some events by their nature are very predictable. But the future you end up growing old in will be at once an alien and familiar place.
But that supports the argument that it is futile to predict the future, as we can never really be certain of it even if we accurately predict some elements of it.

[Fulanito de Tal]

I need some good predictions for the Florida Powerball this weekend.

[Sean]

Sorry but you can't retroactively add to your fucking FUTURE timeline mate, he registered the site in 2008 and the way its laid out, looks as if he predicted everything that happened between then and 2010. Sure you can say "oh but it needs to be constantly updated to predict future events" but its just dishonestly laid out. I do like the concept though.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

By the way guys, this isn't Chit-Chat, so please keep the spammy comments to minimum. You may not believe that a serious discussion of the topic at hand is possible, but kindly leave those of us who do to it.


It's bigger than individuals, but it is dictated by all the individuals that make up the 6+ billion population. The macro-level is made up of everything on the micro-level, all those little individual actions are what make up our overarching history.

Yes, but since people are human with all that implies, and humans have definable characteristics, this means that humans have a certain range of behaviours that they will exhibit, given certain conditions. Humans are not going to start levitating 10 feet off the ground unassisted, so that can be safely ruled out. Human behaviour averages out in large numbers and can be reliably treated statistically. Herd mentality and groupthink also helps make statistical predictions easier.


What about some guy gets cut off and flicks off the person that cut him off. The person he just flicked off is an airline mechanic on his way to work at JFK. While working on some 747, he's in a bad mood sparked by the guy flicking him off, and in his absent-mindedness he forgets to tighten some bolt. Meanwhile, that plane is about to fly to some East Asian country, but as a result of the loosened bolt, it crashes in the Yellow Sea. This ignites an international crisis between the U.S. and China, nukes get launched, 1/4 of the Earth's population is dead. Sure, that may have just served as the impetus that sparked the actualization of an underlying tension, but had that guy not gotten flicked off on the way to work, things probably would have happened way differently.

Maintenance of a machine that is as complicated as a 747, as well as freighted with the lives of hundreds of passengers, doesn't work that way. Modern airliners in particular have redundancies in their design precisely because mechanics are only human and have lapses. Engineers are aware of this fact, having had it drummed into them throughout their education and careers, and so they design for it. There is also a further incentive in that engineers can face professional ruin and criminal prosecution if their designs are found wanting safety-wise.

Also, how do you get from "international crisis" to "nukes being launched"? There's whole books of detail that you are missing out there. If a US airliner crashes into the sea near China, why have both the US and China suddenly developed itchy trigger fingers?


I didn't really follow that too much, I'm not too up on physics, so I don't really have any background on which to respond to that.

OK, a failure of communication on my part. Crap.

Basically, humans act within certain limits. There may be a very large amount of states between those limits, but human behaviour is naturally "clumpy" - people are influence by their peers, the media, the environment etc. Of course some young punks may buck the trend, but they are drowned out by the sea of averages.


But that supports the argument that it is futile to predict the future, as we can never really be certain of it even if we accurately predict some elements of it.

So being partially right is as bad as being totally wrong? I don't understand this. It doesn't strike me as futile, only incomplete, which basically sums up the totality of human knowledge.

Of course, predictions on the level of detail of that timeline website you posted a link to are inevitably going to be wrong, but I would be utterly surprised if not one thing on that website ever came true. But you don't need perfect information about the future to be prepared for it, as long as your plans take into account the uncertainty of the predictions, honestly evaluated.

[anticap]

2500 AD

Mars has been terraformed

...

Many of the early settlers on Mars actually wished for it to remain in its raw, primeval state. ...

These "Reds", as they came to be known, were a potent force during the establishment of the early Martian government. ...

On the opposing side of this debate were the "Greens", mostly consisting of corporate interests.

Funny how a site about predicting an ever-changing future appears to be riding the capitalist "end of history" bandwagon.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Funny how a site about predicting an ever-changing future appears to be riding the capitalist "end of history" bandwagon.

That's what irks me the most about a lot of predictions about the future - they seem to think that we can't do any better than capitalism.

What's particularly galling about the timeline website is that they have matter replication devices in 2190, along with a ubiquitous information network - yet 400 years later capitalism is still around - er, HOW?

Why do so few futurists spend time thinking up possible future economies?

[Tablo]

Probably because most futurists are idiots with zero creativity.

[Widerstand]

Urgh.


Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, physics, economics, and philosophy studying the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. This sensitivity is popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general.[1] This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved.[2] In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems does not make them predictable.[3] This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos.

[kitsune]

What's particularly galling about the timeline website is that they have matter replication devices in 2190, along with a ubiquitous information network - yet 400 years later capitalism is still around - er, HOW?

Hahaha, exactly. People easily get tripped up on unexamined assumptions that are invalid, but how in the world could you miss the implications of something like that in your own prediction?

If the Many-Worlds Interpretation of QM turns out to be an accurate description of reality, there is no such thing as "the future." There are many, many futures branching off from any given point in time. Is Schrödinger's cat alive or dead? Yes. It just depends on which branch you are in. In one branch, you will open the box to find a dead cat, in another you will find a live one. And in both branches I will kick you right in the aisle by the hazmat disposal area for messing with the cat. WTF? I mean, really, next time use a spider or something, what are you thinking?

[Summerspeaker]

But the future you end up growing old in will be at once an alien and familiar place.

What will it be like if Aubrey de Grey happens to succeed?


Why do so few futurists spend time thinking up possible future economies

Because they tend to benefit greatly from the system and thus see minimal reason to transform it.

[Klaatu]

Perhaps we cannot predict the future?

But some things are certain: We will have to eat, we will have to die, and we will always fight wars. These things will not ever change.

The unpredictability is the future technology and the role it will play upon future humans.

Of this we can also be certain: technologies can, and will, become a (or the) controlling factor in the future human condition.
Today, WE run the machines... but perhaps tomorrow, machines will run us (?) :crying:

[bcbm]

if even half of these predictions are on target, or near, the rest of this century is going to be fucking bleak. the continuing development of high technology alongside increasing human misery- mass migrations, destroyed lands and cities, hunger and thirst, etc- remind me a bit of bonanno's "from riot to insurrection," in which he talks about a growing physical and eventually mental and cultural gap between the elite and the lower classes and in the situation these predictions describe access to high technology would become increasingly concentrated as more and more people fall into poverty and desperation, further cementing the rule of the elite.

[Ocean Seal]

The ending stories tend to be a bit more valuable than the starting ones. I feel as if most of their thoughts on the 21st century are entirely wrong. It was too simplistically addressed. Although, I suppose I could do no better.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

if even half of these predictions are on target, or near, the rest of this century is going to be fucking bleak. the continuing development of high technology alongside increasing human misery- mass migrations, destroyed lands and cities, hunger and thirst, etc- remind me a bit of bonanno's "from riot to insurrection," in which he talks about a growing physical and eventually mental and cultural gap between the elite and the lower classes and in the situation these predictions describe access to high technology would become increasingly concentrated as more and more people fall into poverty and desperation, further cementing the rule of the elite.

The problem with that scenario is that high-tech society needs a relatively large amount of educated people to continue running, and where are they going to come from if more and more people are too busy securing their next meal to get a decent education?

[bcbm]

The problem with that scenario is that high-tech society needs a relatively large amount of educated people to continue running, and where are they going to come from if more and more people are too busy securing their next meal to get a decent education?

educated people and the means to receive an education wouldn't dissapear, they would just become available to fewer people and the ones who take part in them are unlikely to be the billions of refugees fleeing desertification, rising seas, famine and war, thus creating further stratification between the top and the bottom.

[Il Medico]

Why does all the shitty stuff have to happen while I'm alive?

[ZeroNowhere]

Perhaps we cannot predict the future?

But some things are certain: We will have to eat, we will have to die, and we will always fight wars. These things will not ever change.
"Perhaps we can't predict the future, but I'll attempt it anyway and try to pass off my speculation as incontestable fact."

[Vanguard1917]

All attempts to predict the future have failed, with the exception of of Nostradamus, who predicted the internet, George Bush, bird flu and the Lib Dem sell-out.

[Ele'ill]

Perhaps the interest in predicting the future is directly related to most of us not having control over our lives. Most if not all of the huge world (and local) events that affect what we want and need from life are caused by and controlled by other people.

[ckaihatsu]

Perhaps the interest in predicting the future is directly related to most of us not having control over our lives. Most if not all of the huge world (and local) events that affect what we want and need from life are caused by and controlled by other people.


Perhaps predictions of the future, however accurate or not, are merely a simple "outgrowth", or extrapolation, of the defining of the world's situation as it exists in the present. (Note that much *historical* research is the "predicting" of *past* events based on evidence available to us in the present.)

So, for a little extra mental effort, we might surmise, to certain degrees of probability and time-extension, that present conditions will maintain themselves out on their current trajectories into the foreseeable future. The *complicated* part is the *interactions* among so many variables and trajectories, especially when an *unforeseeable*, *specific* event plops down in front of us, one that may cause a "sea change", or 'paradigm shift'....

[NGNM85]

That's what irks me the most about a lot of predictions about the future - they seem to think that we can't do any better than capitalism.

What's particularly galling about the timeline website is that they have matter replication devices in 2190, along with a ubiquitous information network - yet 400 years later capitalism is still around - er, HOW?

Why do so few futurists spend time thinking up possible future economies?

This is pretty egregious. I have long, thought, myself, that capitalism, or whatever we want to call it, may simply fade into obsolescence. As far as I can figure the most fundamental requirement is scarcity. If we had unlimited clean power, interstellar travel, the ability to terraraform other planets, and 'matter replicators',....scarcity would not exist. There would be virtually nothing anyone could sell us that we could not obtain for ourselves. I think of it as a macro version of what's happening today in the music industry.

[Klaatu]

"Perhaps we can't predict the future, but I'll attempt it anyway and try to pass off my speculation as incontestable fact."

Do you really think human nature itself will change? It hasn't so far...

[NGNM85]

Do you really think human nature itself will change? It hasn't so far...

Well, assuming genetic engineering and cybernetics advance to the degree that this presumes they will, the human condition will be fundamentally altered. Then we'd have to asess the merits of post-human nature.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Do you really think human nature itself will change? It hasn't so far...

Even barring such advances in genetic enginerring and cybernetics, human nature changes anyway along with the physical and social environment.

[Klaatu]

Even barring such advances in genetic enginerring and cybernetics, human nature changes anyway along with the physical and social environment.

And it is my sincere hope that humans will one day soon recognise that they are being fleeced by capitalism! that is to say that, the social environment will regress into a medieval feudal type system, if something doesn't change for the better, and soon. But then, forget economic systems for now; we must actually fight for just and moral social law in this day and age! It's really that bad, comrade. The wealthy class is getting more powerful by the day. And they are the ones that make the laws!

Must... not...lose... hope