This week's newsletter was about injecting noise, and the use of divination as a mental tool for shaking and breaking our framing of the world. The idea that divination and fortune telling can have a use in rational thinking is not that radical, but I still think it is a powerful reminder that the human… Continue reading Committing to noise
Category: Future Studies
Pandemic periodicity
We have written before about the question of how often we should expect pandemics -- the simple model we applied then was this: is Covid-19 an example of a Spanish flu like event and so likely 1/100 years or should we consider it a sars-virus spill over event, of which we roughly have 1/10 year… Continue reading Pandemic periodicity
Folk prediction
What kind of data sets can be helpful for predictions? One category of data that often are ignored are the data that you can get by simply asking people - or, as it is sometimes called, "walking about". In a recent article about predicting unemployment, the authors note that this kind of often qualitative data… Continue reading Folk prediction
Ten year horizons – a methodological note
How can we deal with ten year forecasting and planning in an interesting way? The naive approach would be to simply guess what state of the world will be probable in ten years, and then describe that as well as we can. This is akin to a kind of science fiction writing, and can add… Continue reading Ten year horizons – a methodological note
Capability forecasting
A lot of work has gone into what is sometimes called "technology forecasting" - attempting to understand how semiconductors, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, proteomics etc will evolve over the coming years. Such research is valuable and interesting - and can be interestingly contrasted with something we could call "capability forecasting". Capability forecasting is focusing not… Continue reading Capability forecasting
Risk and Opportunity – the simplest framework
All organizations occasionally should stop and consider the risks and opportunities facing them, and discuss both mitigation options for the risks and exploitation options for the opportunity. There are many different ways of doing this, but one of the simplest frameworks is the tried and tested impact / probability matrix. What you do is list… Continue reading Risk and Opportunity – the simplest framework
The re-emergence of wargaming
Wargames have a cold war-feel to them, and are sometimes associated with cynical and military men turning the tragedy of war into a calculation. So it seems confusing that the practice of wargaming should have regained some of its popularity no, long after the cold war disappeared - but a few recent articles suggest that… Continue reading The re-emergence of wargaming
Practicing predictions (Mental models IX)
Predicting is hard, especially the future, as Yogi Berra supposedly pointed out. But it is interesting - but not necessarily for the reasons we originally think. Predicting the future is interesting not because you want to find out if you are right, but you want to use the predictions you make to tease out the… Continue reading Practicing predictions (Mental models IX)
The importance of red team storytellers
In an Edge-seminar held by Tetlock recently there was an interesting back and forth about the value of predictions. One view - held by Danny Hillis - could be simplified as: people do not think in predictions, they think in stories and so when people are wrong about the future they are in fact not… Continue reading The importance of red team storytellers
The long arc of uncertainty bends towards…?
The IMF has published an update of its interesting uncertainty index. Noone will be surprised to find that the Covid-19 pandemic and the presidential elections drove uncertainty up, but the real scoop in the chart is the overall slant of the curve we can construct: If the upward slope of the curve suggests that independent… Continue reading The long arc of uncertainty bends towards…?