3 ms·

In one of my high school classes, can't remember why, we discussed an article from the 1950s-ish where people were predicting the future: that by 2000 we'd have

by ajkjk 3y ago

In one of my high school classes, can't remember why, we discussed an article from the 1950s-ish where people were predicting the future: that by 2000 we'd have flying cars and floating cities and robot helpers and stuff. And I remember distinctly that the tone of the class was: "look, people were so wrong about what the future would be like! They really had no idea. So you shouldn't assume you have any idea what the future will be like either." At some point when I was older I realized that there's something really weird about that. Of course the article about people's predictions for the future sounded foolish and absurd. It was selection bias: they picked the foolish predictions and published them. There were countless people alive at the time who knew those predictions were foolish, but they didn't get featured in the article... because being sober and intelligent is less publishable than being stupid and naive. I think about this a lot, because every time something new shows up (crypto, AI, whatever) there are thousands of articles about what the future is going to look like and how outlandish it's going to be... and I think they're mostly just dumb. And it's sad to think that in fifty years, someone will be presenting those articles to explain how confused 2000s-era technologists were about the future. They'll write: "look, people used to think we'd have blockchain-based economies and that AI was about to take over the world! How silly they were." When in fact it was just the foolish idealists who thought that stuff and wouldn't shut up about it. The rest of us were rolling our eyes, but nobody wrote that up.

yawniek 3y ago
Then again, we now do have flying cars, floating cities and robot helpers. They just look different and are not (yet?) that common.
- ogogmad 3y ago
  Floating cities?
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    I think you could make a case that the largest cruise ships would be recognized as such by people from the Titanic era. E.g., https://interestingengineering.com/transportation/worlds-largest-cruise-vessel-5-times-titanic-size-to-set-sail-in-2024 https://interestingengineering.com/transportation/worlds-lar... People are starting to live onboard these things full-time, because it's apparently cheaper than a retirement/nursing home.
ogogmad 3y ago
> They'll write: "look, people used to think we'd have blockchain-based economies and that AI was about to take over the world! How silly they were." I get the wider point of your comment -- which is that most people don't agree with the wild predictions of futurists -- but I wanted to respond to this quote in particular. I think a lot of people mistake being cynical with being clever. In particular, treating blockchain and AI like they have the same potential as one another is maybe overlooking what each of them does. I'm going to quote from this: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/heuristics-that-almost-always-work https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/heuristics-that-almost-alwa... He comments on the latest breathless press releases from tech companies. This will change everything! say the press releases. “No it won’t”, he comments. This is the greatest invention ever to exist! say the press releases. “It’s a scam,” he says. His the best futurist of all. Everyone else occasionally gets bamboozled by some scam or hype train, but he never does. His heuristic is truly superb. But - say it with me - he could be profitably replaced with a rock. “NOTHING EVER CHANGES OR IS INTERESTING”, says the rock, in letters chiseled into its surface. [EDIT: I think my original comment was a bit uncivil and missed your wider point, which remains an interesting one]
- ajkjk 3y ago
  I've read that ACX post, and it is frustratingly close-minded, like many of his posts. I swear, sometimes it seems like Scott is trying to trojan-horse "bad" ideas into his readership on purpose, given his consistency at picking bad ideas and then dressing them up to make them sound palatable. It is really weird. I guess we are ideological opposites in some way. Anyway, the obvious response to that strawman of a critic is: nobody is using that heuristic, "disbelieving in everything". They're disbelieving in things by evaluating them. It's these things, the stupid "get rich quick" scams and the "crazy new technology that makes no sense on its fundamentals", that aren't interesting. Now I would love to know why Bay-Area technologists (or a certain subtype of them) are so attracted to things I evaluate as bad ideas and not attracted to things I evaluate as good ideas. From the perspective of someone in that community it would seem like I shoot down every idea, but that's because their selection of ideas is uniquely bad. Out of the space of "all ideas I see", I see good ideas every day. Out of the space of "ideas they like", I seem to see only bad ones. The group with the strange selection bias is them, not me.

by ajkjk 3y ago

yawniek 3y ago

Then again, we now do have flying cars, floating cities and robot helpers. They just look different and are not (yet?) that common.

ogogmad 3y ago
Floating cities?
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  I think you could make a case that the largest cruise ships would be recognized as such by people from the Titanic era. E.g., https://interestingengineering.com/transportation/worlds-largest-cruise-vessel-5-times-titanic-size-to-set-sail-in-2024 https://interestingengineering.com/transportation/worlds-lar... People are starting to live onboard these things full-time, because it's apparently cheaper than a retirement/nursing home.

ogogmad 3y ago

> They'll write: "look, people used to think we'd have blockchain-based economies and that AI was about to take over the world! How silly they were." I get the wider point of your comment -- which is that most people don't agree with the wild predictions of futurists -- but I wanted to respond to this quote in particular. I think a lot of people mistake being cynical with being clever. In particular, treating blockchain and AI like they have the same potential as one another is maybe overlooking what each of them does. I'm going to quote from this: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/heuristics-that-almost-always-work https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/heuristics-that-almost-alwa... He comments on the latest breathless press releases from tech companies. This will change everything! say the press releases. “No it won’t”, he comments. This is the greatest invention ever to exist! say the press releases. “It’s a scam,” he says. His the best futurist of all. Everyone else occasionally gets bamboozled by some scam or hype train, but he never does. His heuristic is truly superb. But - say it with me - he could be profitably replaced with a rock. “NOTHING EVER CHANGES OR IS INTERESTING”, says the rock, in letters chiseled into its surface. [EDIT: I think my original comment was a bit uncivil and missed your wider point, which remains an interesting one]

ajkjk 3y ago
I've read that ACX post, and it is frustratingly close-minded, like many of his posts. I swear, sometimes it seems like Scott is trying to trojan-horse "bad" ideas into his readership on purpose, given his consistency at picking bad ideas and then dressing them up to make them sound palatable. It is really weird. I guess we are ideological opposites in some way. Anyway, the obvious response to that strawman of a critic is: nobody is using that heuristic, "disbelieving in everything". They're disbelieving in things by evaluating them. It's these things, the stupid "get rich quick" scams and the "crazy new technology that makes no sense on its fundamentals", that aren't interesting. Now I would love to know why Bay-Area technologists (or a certain subtype of them) are so attracted to things I evaluate as bad ideas and not attracted to things I evaluate as good ideas. From the perspective of someone in that community it would seem like I shoot down every idea, but that's because their selection of ideas is uniquely bad. Out of the space of "all ideas I see", I see good ideas every day. Out of the space of "ideas they like", I seem to see only bad ones. The group with the strange selection bias is them, not me.