By predicting the future I’m not talking about psychics, I’m taking about understanding mathematics, physics, computer modeling, the social humanities, etc. well enough to make predictions about major events before they happen.
We have had the ability to predict the future for centuries, since we have understood enough about physics and mathematics to predict astronomical phenomena. We could predict where stars would be, where the moon would be, eclipses, etc. months and years before it actually happened. Columbus once used a prediction of a lunar eclipse to make the Indians think he had contact with God.
Here are some examples of what I mean by predicting the future.
Ray Kurzweil claims there is a pattern of exponential growth in information technology that follow a double exponential curve.
A few days before Katrina hit the areas were evacuated because it was known where and how bad the hurricane was going to hit.
Supercomputers run models of climate, biology, physics, etc to predict what will happen before it actually does. As we learn more about the field and computers grow more powerful by a factor of 1000 every decade, the models will get better.
Bruce Bruno de Mequita is a political science professor who uses game theory, rational choice theory and computer models to predict international events. The CIA investigated his claims and found they were accurate 90% of the time. A prediction he has now is that if the US has fewer than 50,000 troops in Iraq then Iran will form a military alliance with the Shia. he also predicts that by 2010-2011 Iran will give up their nuclear weapons program and instead use their nuclear fuel for research and civilian energy uses.
Economic predictions show there will likely be another housing collapse in 2010-2011 due to a whole new set of mortgages resetting.
We also have predictions of how fast economies all over the world will grow over the next few decades.
etc.
Basically, if you have a video camera a mile from your house and see someone bicycling towards it, you can ‘predict’ the future by saying ‘so and so will be here on his bicycle in 8 minutes’ because you know he is on a bike, how fast he is riding, and the distance to your house. I don’t know if people consider that ‘predicting the future’, but I do think you can make that claim.
So what can be done with this info? What is being done? It seems that we are getting better and better at this. But are the predictions even used, or are they still too unreliable?
What are the consequences where we know with a high degree of certainty (say 80%) what the long term results of our actions are going to be before we even do them?
The problem with any of this kind of modelling is that it’s just not possible to do it accurately on a large scale physically or temporally - you can with reasonable accuracy model the interactions of a few objects for a short time into the future (snooker players do this, with varying degrees of skill), or you can try to model large-scale general trends, but the further you want to look, the wider your scope and the more variables it contains, the more computationally expensive it becomes, fast becoming not just difficult, but actually impossible.
Even in the case of your cyclist, he may stop to eat his sandwiches, he may turn off on a different road, or turn around and go back home, or drop dead, be whisked away by a tornado or be abducted by aliens, etc.
And if you have an interconnected set of computers, a well-defined procedure for sending email, computers and modems for sale to the public cheaply,a lot of well-trained computer experts…you should be able to predict that the internet will come into existance, right?
But nobody did.
All the facts were right there in front of our eyes for 20 years…and nobody predicted the internet, until it just sort of accidently fell into our laps.
Wasn’t it Neils Bohr who said that “predictions are very hard to make, especially about the future”
Prof. Magnus Pyke did in his 1982 book Fifty Years Hence, that I’m hanging onto to be unearthed in 2032 if I live that long.
Among some ridiculously off-the-mark predictions (air showers? Why? How?) he predicts a network of home computers uniting the globe, with words to the effect of “a housewife in England could user her home computer to dial into the computer of a shop in Australia, and order herself a new frock”.
Mind you, Prestel already existed at that time so perhaps you’re looking for an internet prediction that goes back further than that.
The predictions in the OP are kind of like the successful predictions of sf - you can find good hits, but only because there were so many predictions that a few of them will come true. If we did have a way of predicting the future, all the predictions would more or less agree.
One successful prediction/observation is Moore’s Law. But that is actually more a self-fulfilling prophecy these days, since those who make process/processor/memory roadmaps use Moore’s Law to target where they should be at a given time. Things are also slowing down slightly now, not for technical reasons but for economic ones. Fabs are very expensive, and there is a desire to get more use out of existing lines before moving to a new process node.
There was another book by Isaac Asimov, Psychohistory (Wiki, mild spoilers) that has a very reasonable vision of the sort of predictions you’re asking about, even discounting the intergalactic scope.
One of the biggest obstacles, possibly the biggest, is that the finer the detail you want at a designated point in the future, the more data you have to process to get it.
That isn’t true. People predicted it, but they just weren’t mainstream enough to break into mainstream consciousness. Ray Kurzweil, who I referenced in my OP, predicted back in the 1980s that the internet would come about in the early/mid 1990s.
He looked at the exponential growth in internet nodes and back in the 1980s said it would reach a point where it would explode onto the public scene. This was his chart showing exponential growth
So from a linear perspective, nobody expected it. But Kurzweil predicted it back in the 1980s based on exponential trends that it would reach mainstream usage in the mid/early 1990s.
Our understanding of mathematics, physics, social humanities and computer models is growing. As they grow we will get better and better at making accurate predictions for the future.
Bruce Bruno de Mequita had his claims investigated by the CIA who found they were 90% accurate. So he failed 10% of the time, but was accurate 90% of the time. This isn’t like nostradamus where you find ways to match the quatrains to world events after the fact by finding any similarities you can. Right now Bruce Bruno de Mequita is making predictions about issues like what will happen in Iraq and Iran over the next 3-4 years. Fairly detailed predictions.
As far as Moore’s law, Kurzweil states there are exponential trends in various aspects of information technology and biotechnology. RAM, hard drive capacity, transistors, base pairs sequences, cost per base pair, volume of mechanical devices, etc. So it isn’t just moore’s law but a variety of technologies that he says follow exponential trends. He uses these trends to make predictions about where technology will be in the future.
But you can predict the likelihood of those events too and factor them in. Has he eaten today, does he have places he likes to eat between here and there, are there dangerous dogs between here and there, are there any weather patterns to watch out for, etc.
Hmm, I seem to be the first to mention chaos theory.
There are chaotic systems everywhere in nature and society. Contrary to common belief, chaotic systems are not “random”, but predicting their behaviour beyond a certain point can become intractable.
For example, right now we can predict the weather fairly accurately about 5 days into the future. If our most powerful supercomputers become 1000 times more powerful in the future, then maybe our accurate predictions will increase to…7 days.
This is not necessarily because our understanding of the weather is wrong but a consequence of its chaotic nature.
That said, there’s a difference between the weather and climate.
In terms of making big predictions about the world, rather than the chaotic everyday affairs, I guess our predictions are getting better all the time…
I think that the OPs scenario is feasible, but if/when it happens, we’ll be accelerating towards the “technological singularity” anyway, and from our perspective, 21st century man’s perspective, we have no idea where such a process will lead us.
I don’t really understand what the OP is asking. We cannot predict the future. At least in any sort of Minority Report kind of way. We can calculate statistical probabilities for events to occur given what information we currently have. But as they say in finance, past performance does not indicate future performance. That is to say, your bicyclist is likely to continue down the street past your house. But there is a chance he might veer off and do something utterly unexpected and random. At it’s those 1% chances that tend to have a dramatic effect on world events. 9/11 for example.
Which, of course, was caused by a butterfly flapping its wings in Tokyo.
Anyway, what you seem to be on to, is not so much predicting the future, but estimating the statistics. Short of a time machine, we’ll never know with great certainty the outcome of any sufficiently complex event or situation. That never stops us from taking huge precautions or dismissing it outright — look at the division right now on global warming.
If we can show our statistics are more accurate and reliable, it will only allow us to take more efficient precautions. But we will always have to work around undershooting and overshooting.
Yes, we can calculate statistical probabilities. But as mathematics, physics, computer modeling and the social sciences advance we will create more detailed and longer range predictions.
I’m not talking about 100% accurate predictions. The intelligence analyst I referenced (Bruce Bruno de Mequita) was investigated by the CIA and found to be accurate 90% of the time, which means 10% of what he predicted never happened. But that doesn’t change the fact that 90% did.
9/11 was a big deal, but so was the internet. And Ray Kurzweil predicted the internet back in the 1980s based on exponential trends in node growth.
Much of our response to climate change isn’t based on the damage climate change is doing now, it is based on trends in economic growth, industrial growth, growth in greenhouse gases and the effects this will have decades into the future.
