4 ms·

Another useful distinction might be between people who make predictions, prescriptions, imaginings, warnings, etc., about things they are already expert in (a s

Another useful distinction might be between people who make predictions, prescriptions, imaginings, warnings, etc., about things they are already expert in (a scientist making narrow claims about their specific domain, a SF writer unpacking the social ramifications of some technology in their story), and a self-described futurist, who has made it their job to talk about the future in a broader way. That is, people who you would describe as futurists post hoc, and people who have it on their business cards. I am highly skeptical of the latter!

dredmorbius 5y ago
I don't find the distinction is quite so clear. There seem to be two forces coming to bear. One is specific expertise in some domain. Here, there's a challenge in that generalists must of necessity have lesser specific expertise than, well, experts. This a general problem (so to speak) of synoptic or syncretic works. (One such has a wonderful disclaimer in its preface, I'll see if I can dig that up.) The other is self-interest in a specific application area. This is where knowledge becomes secodary to bias, and there are numerous cases of people with deep expertise in specific fields proving poor counsel for considered and complete judgement of them. Edward Midgely (inventor of two of the greatest scourges of the 20th century, leaded petrol and chloroflourocarbon refrigerants) is perhaps the exemplar of this tendency, though he has ample company. As I mentioned earlier in thread, Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock (1970), does pretty well in giving both the optimistic and pessimistic side of technologies. In my estimation, the book's strengths largely come from critics, its weaknesses largely from specific domain experts. Toffler himself (and his often under-credited wife) are not domain experts themselves. There's a generalist-class which often climbs on the cheerleading wagon, though, and that is those who advocate for numerous technologies, though they might better be seen as specialists in advocacy, public relations, and propaganda. Beware those whose principle interest is in making others look good. (Or bad.) There are also experts who have voiced strong cautions over specific technologies. They're often sidelined for doing so (a general hazard of whistleblowing), though some have seen success. One such case is Paul Baran, a co-inventer of packet-based switched networks, the technology on which the Internet was based. Baran wrote numerous articles whilst at RAND cautioning against risks of computing in the 1960s, many of which read as highly relevant and prescient even today. Those are now freely available to the public at my specific request: https://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/b/baran_paul.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/b/baran_paul.html I've compiled a listing of other early cautions concerning privacy and surveillance around computer technology: https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/105074933053020193 https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/105074933053020193
- karaterobot 5y ago
  It's definitely a fuzzy distinction. Candidly, I'm skeptical about generalized methods that make claims about the future and pretend to do so rigorously. The image that comes to mind when someone says "futurology" is those 19th century drawings of people riding flying bicycles to work: breathless excitement, comic in hindsight. To the extent that someone claims they can forecast something with so much uncertainty, the hair on my neck starts to stand up. And maybe I'm condemning a straw man, but it seems like this is your generalist-class, and most of the other groups who would not be as likely to self-identify as a futurist per se.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    I found the quote I was looking for, it's in Arthur S. Iberal, Toward a General Science of Viable Systems (1972), and he's quoting Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (1962). The passage concerns looking backwards rather than forwards, though the sentiment is similar: There is a strong tendency to depreciate works ... which are created by single mids, and the depreciation becomes the more emphatic the nearer such works approximate to being 'Universal Histories'. For example, Mr. H. G. Wells', The Outline of History was received with unmistakable hostility by a number of historical specialists. They criticized severely the errors which they discovered at the points where the writer, in his long journey through time and space, happened to traverse their tiny allotments. They seemed nnot to realize that, in re-living the entire life of Mankind as a single imaginative experience; Mr. Wells was achieving something which they themselves would hardly have dared to attempt -- something, perhaps, of which they had never conceived the possibility. In fact, the purpose and value of Mr. Wells' book seem to have been better appreciated by the general public than by the professional historians of the day. As to specificity of predictions, the example I like to use is of distinguishing between chronological predictions, that a specific even will happen on a specific schedule, and trigger or relational predictions, that one event or set of relationships predicates another. If a few minutes after 9 a.m. on the morning of 10 September 2001, you'd been standing on the corner of Liberty and West streets in lower Manhattan, looking north, and somebody were to ask you how much longer the two towers across the way would stand, your guess might have been decades to a century or more. If someone asked you the same question 24 hours later, your estimate might have been revised downwards considerably. Geology is a study which is remarkably imprecise in predicting when specific large-magnitude events will occur (earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, etc.), though it has developed a very strong facility for suggesting where such indcidents are likely (and more pointedly, where not). The temporal uncertainty is a given due to the domain, characteristics, and timeline. The locational certainty is due largely to the predictability of what dynamics and structures give rise to events. (Yes, there are still surprises in both dimensions, though these tend to accrue additional knowledge.) All of the social and behavioural sciences have the handicap that the studies themselves exist within the system they are studying. Psychology, economics, sociology, political science, etc., operate within domains in which they are themselves among the variables and causal agents. Physical and biological sciences, for the most part, do not. This is seems to me a principle further confounding factor for the behavioural sciences, though it's not an insurmountable one. Even within those domains, activities and actions exist within constraint parameters, and eventually those constraints (one might call them ... limits) interpose. Peter Turchin is among those who's been doing interesting work in computational history, with some success.

dredmorbius 5y ago

I don't find the distinction is quite so clear. There seem to be two forces coming to bear. One is specific expertise in some domain. Here, there's a challenge in that generalists must of necessity have lesser specific expertise than, well, experts. This a general problem (so to speak) of synoptic or syncretic works. (One such has a wonderful disclaimer in its preface, I'll see if I can dig that up.) The other is self-interest in a specific application area. This is where knowledge becomes secodary to bias, and there are numerous cases of people with deep expertise in specific fields proving poor counsel for considered and complete judgement of them. Edward Midgely (inventor of two of the greatest scourges of the 20th century, leaded petrol and chloroflourocarbon refrigerants) is perhaps the exemplar of this tendency, though he has ample company. As I mentioned earlier in thread, Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock (1970), does pretty well in giving both the optimistic and pessimistic side of technologies. In my estimation, the book's strengths largely come from critics, its weaknesses largely from specific domain experts. Toffler himself (and his often under-credited wife) are not domain experts themselves. There's a generalist-class which often climbs on the cheerleading wagon, though, and that is those who advocate for numerous technologies, though they might better be seen as specialists in advocacy, public relations, and propaganda. Beware those whose principle interest is in making others look good. (Or bad.) There are also experts who have voiced strong cautions over specific technologies. They're often sidelined for doing so (a general hazard of whistleblowing), though some have seen success. One such case is Paul Baran, a co-inventer of packet-based switched networks, the technology on which the Internet was based. Baran wrote numerous articles whilst at RAND cautioning against risks of computing in the 1960s, many of which read as highly relevant and prescient even today. Those are now freely available to the public at my specific request: https://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/b/baran_paul.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/b/baran_paul.html I've compiled a listing of other early cautions concerning privacy and surveillance around computer technology: https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/105074933053020193 https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/105074933053020193

karaterobot 5y ago
It's definitely a fuzzy distinction. Candidly, I'm skeptical about generalized methods that make claims about the future and pretend to do so rigorously. The image that comes to mind when someone says "futurology" is those 19th century drawings of people riding flying bicycles to work: breathless excitement, comic in hindsight. To the extent that someone claims they can forecast something with so much uncertainty, the hair on my neck starts to stand up. And maybe I'm condemning a straw man, but it seems like this is your generalist-class, and most of the other groups who would not be as likely to self-identify as a futurist per se.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  I found the quote I was looking for, it's in Arthur S. Iberal, Toward a General Science of Viable Systems (1972), and he's quoting Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (1962). The passage concerns looking backwards rather than forwards, though the sentiment is similar: There is a strong tendency to depreciate works ... which are created by single mids, and the depreciation becomes the more emphatic the nearer such works approximate to being 'Universal Histories'. For example, Mr. H. G. Wells', The Outline of History was received with unmistakable hostility by a number of historical specialists. They criticized severely the errors which they discovered at the points where the writer, in his long journey through time and space, happened to traverse their tiny allotments. They seemed nnot to realize that, in re-living the entire life of Mankind as a single imaginative experience; Mr. Wells was achieving something which they themselves would hardly have dared to attempt -- something, perhaps, of which they had never conceived the possibility. In fact, the purpose and value of Mr. Wells' book seem to have been better appreciated by the general public than by the professional historians of the day. As to specificity of predictions, the example I like to use is of distinguishing between chronological predictions, that a specific even will happen on a specific schedule, and trigger or relational predictions, that one event or set of relationships predicates another. If a few minutes after 9 a.m. on the morning of 10 September 2001, you'd been standing on the corner of Liberty and West streets in lower Manhattan, looking north, and somebody were to ask you how much longer the two towers across the way would stand, your guess might have been decades to a century or more. If someone asked you the same question 24 hours later, your estimate might have been revised downwards considerably. Geology is a study which is remarkably imprecise in predicting when specific large-magnitude events will occur (earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, etc.), though it has developed a very strong facility for suggesting where such indcidents are likely (and more pointedly, where not). The temporal uncertainty is a given due to the domain, characteristics, and timeline. The locational certainty is due largely to the predictability of what dynamics and structures give rise to events. (Yes, there are still surprises in both dimensions, though these tend to accrue additional knowledge.) All of the social and behavioural sciences have the handicap that the studies themselves exist within the system they are studying. Psychology, economics, sociology, political science, etc., operate within domains in which they are themselves among the variables and causal agents. Physical and biological sciences, for the most part, do not. This is seems to me a principle further confounding factor for the behavioural sciences, though it's not an insurmountable one. Even within those domains, activities and actions exist within constraint parameters, and eventually those constraints (one might call them ... limits) interpose. Peter Turchin is among those who's been doing interesting work in computational history, with some success.