Unpredicting 2024
My predictions for 2024--oh, wait...
The future is the dimension of surprise.
Oh, there may be other versions of it; there’s the absolute predictability of Newtonian mechanics which allows me to know exactly what time the sun will rise over my house on this day in the year 2050. There are statistical trends we can follow, and right now you can find any number of articles online talking about planned or expected events in the coming year. These are what you might call “foresight lite.” It’s easy to look at a trend and project it into the future; people will ooh and aah at your cleverness and even pay you to do it. But that information is not what we actually care about, and it’s not what your average random stranger is fishing for when they find out I do foresight and ask me to “predict something.” What we care about, what they’re fishing for, is what’s going to surprise us.
Human society is a complex adaptive system. It’s full of feedback loops that can amplify or dampen the impact of events, and is both exquisitely sensitive and possessed of mind-numbing inertia depending on the whim of the moment. We’re full of surprises.
So are the natural and technological worlds. 2023 was the hottest year ever recorded and will likely go down in history as being the year when global warming accelerated. Nobody predicted that. We temporarily hit a global average of 1.7C above historical levels, a landmark the planet was not expected to reach until the next decade. If you go back one year and review “predictions for 2023” articles from December and January, you’re not going to find “hottest year ever recorded” among them, nor anybody predicting the scale of the catastrophic global wildfires and droughts we saw. We had some idea that El Nino would cause some disruption, but policies and planning were based on past performance and trends. Trends are only right until they’re wrong; more really is different, especially it seems with global temperatures.
If we reframe the coming year around one simple idea—expect surprises—then it becomes clear that predictions are irrelevant and can even be dangerous when they lead us to rely on eventualities that don’t happen. Because the future we care about is the dimension of surprise, by definition we can’t predict it. So ignore all those “predictions for 2024” articles, they’re not going to help.
Instead of trying to plan based on unreliable foreknowledge, ask yourself where you are resilient, and where you are brittle. Work on increasing your ability to react well to surprises.
This is a strategy that works for everybody, from governments down to ordinary people. Are you ready for a shock? On an individual basis, most such preparedness is financial, but the surprise of Covid forced us to re-evaluate our relationships, use of space and resources—think about its effect on the daily commute—and behaviour in public spaces. At present we all need to be thinking about our political resilience as well: are we prepared for some of the rights and freedoms we’ve lived with our whole lives to be suddenly ripped away? And, for new political actors, AIs that act as ruthlessly efficient propaganda machines, to dominate social media in the new year?
Surprise being what it is, it’s where you’re not looking that matters. Everybody’s gazes are fixed on Ukraine, Gaza, the West’s relationship with China, the American election cycle, AI, and the climate. Okay—what potentially important flashpoints and slumbering crises are we ignoring while we do that? What have you not thought about recently that would have a major impact on your life if it suddenly changed? (Geopolitically, I’m watching South American social and constitutional shifts, and the imminent conflict over Arctic sovereignty.)
This is not “foresight lite.” It’s hard work finding your own blind spot, but that’s what the discipline is actually about.
Spotting the Invisible
In “Who Paints the Dew on the Daisy?” I talked about theories of change, and how seeing the world (and the future) through different lenses can drastically change our understanding and expectations. To recap, these are the main theories I said we all use to one extent or another:
“He Did It.” Only humans change the world; nature and technology are passive instruments or recipients of human power.
Cyclical History. There is nothing new under the sun, as Ecclesiastes said. If something weird is happening now, we need only search through history for the last time it occurred to understand how events will play out this time.
"It's All Clockwork." Harri Seldon’s Psychohistory, the idea that if you know all the starting conditions of a situation, you can predict everything that will subsequently happen. (Also known as Laplace’s Demon.)
Systems Theory. Everything interacts and the world is built out of mutually causal loops nested inside one another.
Surprise! Prediction is useless—the theme of this post, but you’ll be quick to notice, just one lens through which we can view the world. I’m advocating that at the start of 2024, we approach the world with this stance, but one way you can do it is to constantly shift your perspective to the others. See what’s deterministic, what’s the result of human decisions, and where to bear in mind that “the purpose of a system is what it does.”
Constraint. This is the one theory of change I didn’t thoroughly explore in the “Daisy” post. That’s because it’s a whole worldview on its own, and possibly the most important approach to understanding change in the 21st century. I promise I’ll do a proper deep dive into it, but not today.
Try this exercise: which of these lenses is the one you mainly use in setting your expectations about the new year? Each has something to say about what can and can’t happen, and also says something about where you look for oncoming shocks. Each can be right, but each can be wrong. Most importantly, each comes with a set of assumptions about if and how much agency you have to influence outcomes.
Reframe For the Win
I started this newsletter with a reframing of space development. This was an example of reframing, an important concept that we need to spend more time on in the new year. Particularly powerful is the apocalyptic imagery that is used in framing many of the current issues facing us. I’ll just remind you to watch out for apocalyptic terms and subtext in the news and posts you read in the upcoming months. Step back, remove the terminology and look at what’s actually being said. This will help with understanding when the rhetoric gets hot.
The reason why you should do all this is to find out where you’re vulnerable—personally, organizationally, and politically. Locate those weak spots, and learn what you can do to build resilience there. Have backup plans. Question your investments. If AI really is coming for your job, what should you be doing now to prepare for that?
Trust me, doing these things is a lot more useful than trying to predict what’ll happen next. Because we don’t know, and we can’t know.
And Now, a Tease
I have a big announcement to make next week. I think you’re going to like it a lot. It’s about the direction and growth of this newsletter, which has been made possible by your interest and support.
Happy New Year, everyone, and remember not to doomscroll (too much) in 2024.