I’ve decided to make a detailed list of rules for judging the credibility of futurists and their predictions. You might notice it re-uses some content from past blog posts of mine. For obvious reasons, I think it’s better to have it all in one place.
From now on, I intend to follow these rules when making my own predictions or when judging those made by others. Having a strong process for this is important enough to me that, if I ever make changes to it, I will dedicate a new blog entry to it, and I’ll repost the entire list just to keep it at the forefront. Remember, I am a “Militant” futurist because I’m a stickler for rigor and process.
Never unquestioningly believe anyone else’s predictions, even if the person making them is famous, smart and seems to know what they’re talking about. Always be skeptical and do the following:
- Ensure that the person’s education and professional credentials are relevant to their predictions. A useful measure of a scientist’s area of and level of expertise is the quantity and quality of the peer-reviewed papers they have produced.
Example: A scientist with a Nobel prize for work in human biochemistry predicts a nuclear war will happen within ten years. His C.V. shows he lacks any training or accomplishments in fields relevant to the prediction, like foreign policy or nuclear proliferation. - Be suspicious when experts have conflicts of interest that may bias their opinions and predictions.
Example: A tech tycoon claims at an open shareholders meeting that his company’s electric car output will increase 500% over the next year. The tycoon owns most of his company’s stock and will profit if people believe his prediction and bid up the stock price. - Remember that experts whose theories fall far outside the scientific mainstream are usually (but not always) wrong.
Example: A well-credentialed government climatologist writes an academic journal paper predicting the Earth will soon start cooling down because his newly-developed climate model shows that a “negative feedback loop” is triggered once the Earth’s surface temperatures rise to a certain level. Debates within the scientific community about the accuracy of his model are too complex for non-experts to understand and judge for themselves. Only a small minority of his colleagues say it is accurate. - Be very suspicious of scientists and other experts who feel aggrieved or persecuted by the mainstream of their professions. If an expert with an outlier theory or prediction also believes there is a conspiracy against him or her, it should raise a red flag in your mind.
Example: An economist who became a multimillionaire through skillful investing and by starting his own financial companies claims on the internet that the banking system is about to collapse, that officials in the government and Wall Street are colluding to conceal the impeding disaster, and that some of his recent business setbacks are due to clandestine retaliation from the powerful men he’s been trying to expose. - Be skeptical of predictions that are unsupported by independently verifiable data.
Example: A trained geneticist and retired head of the world’s biggest fertility clinic says that Gattaca-level human genetic engineering will exist in five years thanks to rapid growth in our knowledge of genetics and in the power of our gene editing tools. He provides no documentation that either is improving at the necessary rates (perhaps he claims to have seen secret, proprietary data). Other experts who are familiar with the germane scientific literature and technology say the prediction is far too optimistic, and that it’s implausible any private group could have secret research and technology so far beyond what is publicly available. - Be very skeptical of predictions that hinge on future discoveries that fundamentally change the laws of science.
Example: A visionary director makes a film set in the future where people have flying cars that float thanks to some kind of anti-gravity technology as opposed to helicopter rotors or some other device that blows air downward. During promotional interviews, he proudly says that he thinks his movie will prove accurate. When the film is released, all theories and observations about gravity and its mechanics suggest that it can’t be manipulated using any kind of technology, and that no anti-gravity force exists.
While you’re free to listen to and analyze predictions made by anyone, it’s a better use of time to focus on predictions made by people who have made accurate forecasts in the past. Having such a track record also helps satisfy the “[relevant] education and professional credentials” requirement mentioned earlier. However, determining how accurately a person has predicted the future can be a more complex task than it sounds, and I recommend keeping these pointers in mind:
- You can be right thanks to luck alone, and “a stopped clock is right twice a day.”
Example: An economist who has written several bestselling books about real estate investing correctly predicted in 2005 that the U.S. real estate market was about to peak in value and would then crash a year later. However, in earlier books, articles, and public comments, he made the same predictions for 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. He is now hailed by some as an “expert” in real estate market trends thanks to his correct 2005 prediction and is routinely interviewed on financial news shows. - A prediction can be wrong in its specifics, but right in principle.
Example: In 1998, a futurist predicts that, by the year 2009, average people will commonly wear small computers and sensors that will be integrated into their jewelry, clothing, wallets, and other worn accessories, and that those devices will work together through LANs. 2009 comes to an end without this materializing, but not because the devices proved too expensive or technologically infeasible to build: Rather, consumers opted to buy single devices–smartphones–that performed all of the same functions. - Don’t penalize futurists for the disruptive effects of Black Swan events.
Example: A well-regarded historian and political scientist writes a book in the late 1990s predicting that the prosperity and global dominance America enjoyed that decade will last about another 20 years, when China will get strong enough to challenge it. Shortly after that, the 9/11 terrorist attacks and a peculiarly inept U.S. administration plunge the U.S. into a series of costly military campaigns that hurt its economy, morale and global influence, and distract it from China.
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