The emerging discipline of cliometrics, for which Robert Fogel and Douglass North received a Nobel prize in 1993, is the probabilistic and predictive study of economic history, using statistical methods and economic theories, and new methods of historical research. It is one way our history gets more predictive, and it helps us to find more hard and soft economic and societal trends.
Cliometrics seems like an interesting evidenced based approach to predicting the future.
We base our theory of adaptive foresight on the PDAR cycle. Like Boyd we will call it a loop, rather than a cycle, because “loop” is one syllable, and thus even faster to say than “cycle”. In honor of Boyd’s emphasis on speed of learning and adaptation, we’ll call our cycle a Do loop, rather than an OODA loop, because successful Doing is the essence of adaptation, and because “Do” is just one syllable, and thus even shorter than “OODA” (or “PDAR”). All of these loops, and others we will explore later, have the same common basis in cognitive science and psychology.
I prefer cycle. To me it sounds like it has more weight behind the word and purpose. Loop sounds like your stuck or thread to be tugged on.
Solar panels masquerade as roads and stained-glass windows. Plant life is intertwined with infrastructure, and colourful handcrafted wares are sold along pedestrian walkways. There may be airships, but a Victorian-inspired, ominous steampunk landscape this is not. Nor has this near-future fantasy been corrupted by cyberpunk’s superintelligent singularities and artificial, post-human visions.
I think that TV and movies always push a doom and gloom cyberpunk singularity future because it sells at the box office. I started to think the future will happen as quietly as the sun shines.
Almost one-third of all working-age men in America aren’t doing diddly-squat. They don’t have a job, and they aren’t looking for one either. One-third of all working-age men. That’s almost 30 million people!
I think what this article is trying to is that a man's value is only appreciated if they are working and providing. You're only considered desirable if you can hold down a legal legitimate job?
It seems like working legally to provide for yourself in America is really justone option these days.
I know a couple of men who haven't worked in years and do various jobs under the table and they're getting old I wonder what they're gonna do when they can't work anymore. Overall it's better to work legally and pay your taxes and into social security.
IC. If futurists expect to be useful, they should expect to be ridiculedand for their ideas initially to be rejected. Some of their ideasmay deserve ridicule and rejection, but even their useful ideas about the futures may also be ridiculed.
I predicted COVID-19. I was mocked at work and I work for hospital.
II. Any useful idea about the futures should appear to be ridiculous.IIA. Because new technologies permit new behaviors and values, challenging old beliefs and values which are based on prior technologies, much that will be characteristic of the futures is initially novel and challenging. It typically seems at first obscene, impossible, stupid, "science fiction", ridiculous. And then it becomes familiar and eventually "normal.
This statements makes total sense if you're a futurist. Think about this 100 years ago we predicted the weather by looking outside and figuring out what was happening. At that time you could only look a minute or a few minutes into the future. Now we have super computers that can predict an accurate 4 to 5 day forecast of the weather. beyond that it begins to get pretty inaccurate. 100 years ago that would've been absurd that you could predict the weather. It 's even more absurd that we're now using Navier Stokes equations to predict the weather AND its more absurd that computing power used Moore's Law to do all this! You see some rare people see the future and make it reality. While most live in the future that was shaped by someone else.
"The future" cannot be "predicted," but "alternative futures" can, and should be "forecast."Thus, one of the main tasks of futures studies is to identify and examine the major alternative futures that exist at any given time and place.
I like how it states that the future can't be predicted but forecast. I agree with his statement. I believe with black box machines we will in fact forecast more and more accurate futures for societies. AI black box machines will be the crystal ball of the future.
Prospection has another important application: It motivates us to achieve our goals. But the relationship here is not a simple one. Work by psychologist Gabriele Oettingen and colleagues shows that whether thinking about the future helps us actually reach our goals depends on how we think about the future.
its interesting how we think about the future it affects our goal decision process
An optimistic philosopher will come across as foolish and naïve, like Voltaire’s Candide who resolutely believes that we live in the best of all possible worlds despite the contrary evidence in front of him. We don’t speak of ‘naïve pessimists’ do we?
Optimists do tend to be reckless. Pessimists tend to not act.