We don’t know how to reliably plan for long term. We didn’t have enough iteration of “long term” in any environment similar to our current environment to have any hope for long term planning to work. Try guestimating 2009 based on data from 1909 alone and tell me how it went. Or 2009 based on 1959.
Even the most basic things like human population, and GDP/capita cannot be estimated with anything remotely resembling reliability past a couple of decades.
You know, that list is surprisingly predictive. They got a lot of stuff wrong, but they managed to predict cell phones and even a primitive form of internet. They’re about on par with Heinlein’s Future History.
We don’t know how to reliably plan for long term. We didn’t have enough iteration of “long term” in any environment similar to our current environment to have any hope for long term planning to work. Try guestimating 2009 based on data from 1909 alone and tell me how it went. Or 2009 based on 1959.
Even the most basic things like human population, and GDP/capita cannot be estimated with anything remotely resembling reliability past a couple of decades.
Mandatory funny links!
http://www.yorktownhistory.org/homepages/1900_predictions.htm
http://expositions.bnf.fr/utopie/feuill/index.htm
You know, that list is surprisingly predictive. They got a lot of stuff wrong, but they managed to predict cell phones and even a primitive form of internet. They’re about on par with Heinlein’s Future History.