Prediction is not about the future, it's about the present

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Now that I’m fairly old, I can look back on a wide range of visions of the 21st century, many of which now seem obsolete. Here are just a few examples:

I recall the 1960s as being a period of techno-optimism. There were visions of a 21st century filled with space travel, supersonic airliners and flying cars.

The mood became more pessimistic during the 1970s. The famous Club of Rome report warned of overpopulation and resource depletion.

In the early 1990s, there was optimism that “The End of History” would usher in an age of peaceful democratic capitalism.

Late in the 1990s, worry increased that the 21st century would see dramatically rising global temperatures.

In the early 2000s, “The Clash of Civilizations” view became trendy, with a special focus on the clash between the West and the Muslim world.

Around 2010, there was an increasing view that this would be the Chinese Century.

A few years later, there were increasing fears of secular stagnation.

Today, people worry about the rise of nationalism, falling birthrates, and fear of unaligned AI.

What do all of these visions have in common? The only unifying thread that I can see is that they all reflect what was going on at the moment.

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I won’t try to predict the future course of the 21st century, but I will try to predict the future course of 21st century predictions. Ten years from now, I expect the consensus forecast for remainder of the century will largely reflect the headline news stories of the 2030s. I predict that in the 2040s, forecasts for the remainder of the century will largely reflect the headline news stories of that decade. Ditto for the 2050s. What will those news stories be? I have no idea. But I strongly believe that predictions of the future will continue to reflect current events, and will mostly not reflect the actual future that plays out over time.

In other words, expect the unexpected. And then expect people to assume that the unexpected will become the new norm, until it is superseded by some other unexpected event.

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