Update:
How to estimate validity of future’s models?
Refutability – check early predictions of the model. Popper’s criteria. The model should allow falsification.
Completeness – the model should include all known strong historic trends.
Evidence base – “predict past” + built on large empirical base.
Support – Who: thinkers and futurists. How: independently
Is it planning (normative) model? No wishful thinking. Planning must be based on some model of the future.
Complexity. Too complex = false. Too exact = false.
Too strong predictions for near future contradict Copernican mediocracy. Because if we randomly chosen from the time when the model works, we should be somewhere in the middle of it. For example, if I predict that nuclear war will happen tomorrow, I bet against the fact that if didn’t happen for 70 years, and it’s a priory probability to happen tomorrow of very small.
Principle: strongest process wins. We should choose the model that predict most powerful changes. For example nuclear war would have stronger effect on demographic than space exploration.
Quickest process wins. Technological development predicts large changes in next 20 years and resource’s depletion in, say, next 50 years. In this case tech, development is better prediction model than resource analysis.
Update: How to estimate validity of future’s models?
Refutability – check early predictions of the model. Popper’s criteria. The model should allow falsification.
Completeness – the model should include all known strong historic trends.
Evidence base – “predict past” + built on large empirical base.
Support – Who: thinkers and futurists. How: independently
Is it planning (normative) model? No wishful thinking. Planning must be based on some model of the future.
Complexity. Too complex = false. Too exact = false.
Too strong predictions for near future contradict Copernican mediocracy. Because if we randomly chosen from the time when the model works, we should be somewhere in the middle of it. For example, if I predict that nuclear war will happen tomorrow, I bet against the fact that if didn’t happen for 70 years, and it’s a priory probability to happen tomorrow of very small.
Principle: strongest process wins. We should choose the model that predict most powerful changes. For example nuclear war would have stronger effect on demographic than space exploration.
Quickest process wins. Technological development predicts large changes in next 20 years and resource’s depletion in, say, next 50 years. In this case tech, development is better prediction model than resource analysis.