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Comment by TazeTSchnitzel | Hacker News Reader

One problem is what demographics futurists tend to be. White men are less likely to imagine a future with full gender equality and black liberation than black women are, I would imagine. People living in the West will think less about the rise of the rest of the world.

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Or perhaps it's the reverse. If you ask "white men" about the liberation status of women/minorities, you're probably going to find them MORE likely to say that equality has already been achieved. So when they write stories, they'll write them as if everyone is equal and living the same utopian dream they are.

On the other hand if someone comes from a background where they feel oppressed, they're going to write that into their work.

That's part of the point of the article. People continue to extrapolate from what they view culture currently is, as if it continues indefinitely into the future. I think based on that "white men" are going to view it as being more pleasant and fair (i.e. their own experience) than minorities.

That's true. People from oppressed groups are more pessimistic about the future.

Or, well, pessimistic at all. One of the weird things about the post-war West is most people honestly expect the future to be better.

I don't know that I can agree with this assessment. Large-scale social norms change always seem impossible N years before they become so ingrained to seem unshakable.

So "impossible to imagine" strikes me as an uncharitable characterization. I can imagine that vegetarianism becomes a moral norm, and I can imagine how the change could happen, but that's entirely disconnected from my doubt it will happen. I also remember the time in my life when gay rights weren't the foregone conclusion they've been for the last 10 years.

If we look at the distribution of shifting societal attitudes, there is going to be some threshold that turns things from "wishful thinking" to "probably going to happen." Without knowing what the information available at the time, and methodology used was generate the prediction, lying any blame at the feet of white/male/rich strikes me as applying a currently politically fashionable one size fits all explanation.

Unnecessary generalizations..

Unnecessary? This is not a novel suggestion about the problems with futurists. It may be a generalisation, but it's pretty accurate generally. People privileged in some way aren't going to think much about that privilege. The rich won't envision a future with less (or more) poverty.

Check out "The Other Foot" [0] by Ray Bradbury.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illustrated_Man

What data or study do you have to backup your baseless generalizations?

It may be a generalisation, but it's pretty accurate generally. — [citation needed]

The rich won't envision a future with less (or more) poverty. — [citation needed]

White men are less likely to imagine a future with full gender equality and black liberation than black women are — [citation needed]

People living in the West will think less about the rise of the rest of the world. — [citation needed]

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