I think this is another key application of the way of Bayes. The usefulness of typical future predictions is hampered by the expectation of binary statements.
Most people don’t make future pronouncements by making lists of 100 absurd-seeming possibilities each with a low but significant probability and say “although I would bet againt any single one of these happening by 2100, I predict that at least 5 of them will.”
A classic simplified model for predicting uncertain futures is a standard tournament betting pool (like the NCAAs for instance). In any reasonably competitive 64 team field, given an even bet on the best team to be the winner, you would be against. But it is still correct to bet the best team to win in a pool (barring any information about other bets). OTOH, if you have big upset incentives, or if you know who else is betting on what, sometimes you can make profitable (+EV) bets on teams that are less likely to win than the best team, because those bets are claims of the form “I believe team X has greater than Y% probability to do Z”, where Y can be arbitrarily low.
Predicting futures is similar. Presumably crazy future predictions look absurd even to field experts because they have a very low probability of occuring. It is right to bet against all of them one on one. But the number of such absurd but not impossible predictions is so large, that it is not right to bet against all of them together. As we head further into the future, the probability that some absurd thing will happen rapidly approaches 1.
The problem is figuring out which ones to bet on if you are making a typical prediction list that is phrased “In year 2100 thus and so will be the case”. And the answer is that we don’t have enough information to make any absurd predictions with even close to 50% confidence. If we could make a prediction of something with 50% confidence then, at least within fields possessing appropriate knowledge, it would not be considered absurd.
I’d like to see more futurists make predictions of the form I mentioned in my second paragraph, similar to Robin’s approach in the list of 10 crazy things he believes.
Because if experts did that, it would get us thinking more about the 1000 or so currently foreseeable directions from which the 10-20 absurd changes of the next 100 years are most likely to come.
I think this is another key application of the way of Bayes. The usefulness of typical future predictions is hampered by the expectation of binary statements.
Most people don’t make future pronouncements by making lists of 100 absurd-seeming possibilities each with a low but significant probability and say “although I would bet againt any single one of these happening by 2100, I predict that at least 5 of them will.”
A classic simplified model for predicting uncertain futures is a standard tournament betting pool (like the NCAAs for instance). In any reasonably competitive 64 team field, given an even bet on the best team to be the winner, you would be against. But it is still correct to bet the best team to win in a pool (barring any information about other bets). OTOH, if you have big upset incentives, or if you know who else is betting on what, sometimes you can make profitable (+EV) bets on teams that are less likely to win than the best team, because those bets are claims of the form “I believe team X has greater than Y% probability to do Z”, where Y can be arbitrarily low.
Predicting futures is similar. Presumably crazy future predictions look absurd even to field experts because they have a very low probability of occuring. It is right to bet against all of them one on one. But the number of such absurd but not impossible predictions is so large, that it is not right to bet against all of them together. As we head further into the future, the probability that some absurd thing will happen rapidly approaches 1.
The problem is figuring out which ones to bet on if you are making a typical prediction list that is phrased “In year 2100 thus and so will be the case”. And the answer is that we don’t have enough information to make any absurd predictions with even close to 50% confidence. If we could make a prediction of something with 50% confidence then, at least within fields possessing appropriate knowledge, it would not be considered absurd.
I’d like to see more futurists make predictions of the form I mentioned in my second paragraph, similar to Robin’s approach in the list of 10 crazy things he believes.
Because if experts did that, it would get us thinking more about the 1000 or so currently foreseeable directions from which the 10-20 absurd changes of the next 100 years are most likely to come.