I’m curious how you think this explains historical scientific progress. It seems like Ptolemy 2,000 years ago could make better predictions about celestial mechanics than sociologists today can make about crime rates, for example. Modern pollsters have access to way more data points than Ptolemy, but I think his predictions about the position of a planet 10 years in the future are more accurate than pollsters’ predictions of elections 10 weeks in the future.
It seems hard to explain this without somehow describing celestial mechanics as “simpler”.
I think as far as science goes, much of old celestial mechanic findings were rather “simple”. Human systems definitely seem less predictable than those. However, there are many other technical things we can predict well that aren’t human. Computer infrastructures are far more complicated than many celestial mechanics, and we can predict their behavior decently enough (expect that computers won’t fail for certain duration, or expect very complex chains of procedures to continue to function).
It’s expected that we can predict the general population trends 10-50 years out in the future. There are definitely some human aggregate aspects that are fairly easy to predict. We can similarly predict with decent certainty that many things won’t happen. The US, for all of its volatility, seems very unlikely to become a radical Buddhist nation or split up into many parts any time soon. In many ways modern society is quite boring.
Thanks for this interesting idea!
I’m curious how you think this explains historical scientific progress. It seems like Ptolemy 2,000 years ago could make better predictions about celestial mechanics than sociologists today can make about crime rates, for example. Modern pollsters have access to way more data points than Ptolemy, but I think his predictions about the position of a planet 10 years in the future are more accurate than pollsters’ predictions of elections 10 weeks in the future.
It seems hard to explain this without somehow describing celestial mechanics as “simpler”.
I think as far as science goes, much of old celestial mechanic findings were rather “simple”. Human systems definitely seem less predictable than those. However, there are many other technical things we can predict well that aren’t human. Computer infrastructures are far more complicated than many celestial mechanics, and we can predict their behavior decently enough (expect that computers won’t fail for certain duration, or expect very complex chains of procedures to continue to function).
It’s expected that we can predict the general population trends 10-50 years out in the future. There are definitely some human aggregate aspects that are fairly easy to predict. We can similarly predict with decent certainty that many things won’t happen. The US, for all of its volatility, seems very unlikely to become a radical Buddhist nation or split up into many parts any time soon. In many ways modern society is quite boring.
The US also has a somewhat homogeneous culture. Many people are taught very similar things, watch similar movies, etc. We can predict quite a bit already about people.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/?sh=4d09ff3a6668
(Sorry to focus on the US, but it’s one example that comes to mind, and easier to discuss than global populations at large)