[tt] [SALT] Rules of forecasting (Paul Saffo talk)

[Eugen Leitl]

----- Forwarded message from Stewart Brand <sb at gbn.org> -----

From: Stewart Brand <sb at gbn.org>
Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 11:42:09 -0800
To: salt at list.longnow.org
Subject: [SALT] Rules of forecasting (Paul Saffo talk)
Reply-To: services at longnow.org


   Reflecting on his 25 years as a forecaster, Paul Saffo pointed out
   that a forecaster's job is not to predict outcomes, but to map the
   "cone of uncertainty" on a subject.  Where are the edges of what might
   happen?  (Uncertainty is cone-shaped because it expands as you project
   further into the future--- next decade has more surprises in store
   than next week.)

   Rule:  Wild cards sensitize us to surprise, and they push the edges of
   the cone out further.  You can call weird imaginings a wild card and
   not be ridiculed.  Science fiction is brilliant at this, and often
   predictive, because it plants idea bombs in teenagers which they make
   real 15 years later.

   Rule:  Change is never linear.  Our expectations are linear, but new
   technologies come in "S" curves, so we routinely overestimate
   short-term change and underestimate long-term change.  "Never mistake
   a clear view for a short distance."

   "Inflection points are tiptoeing past us all the time."  He saw one at
   the DARPA Grand Challenge race for robot cars in the Mojave Desert in
   2004 and 2005.  In 2004 no cars finished the race, and only four got
   off the starting line.  In 2005, all 23 cars started and five
   finished.

   Rule:  Look for indicators- things that don't fit.  At the same time
   the robot cars were triumphing in the desert, 108 human-driven cars
   piled into one another in the fog on a nearby freeway.  A survey of
   owners of Roomba robot vacuum cleaners showed that 2/3 of owners give
   the machine a personal name, and 1/3 take it with them on vacations.

   Rule:  Look back twice as far.  Every decade lately there's a new
   technology that sets the landscape.  In the 1980s, microprocessors
   made a processing decade that culminated in personal computers.  In
   the 1990s it was the laser that made for communication bandwidth and
   an access decade culminating in the World Wide Web.  In the 2000s
   cheap sensors are making an interaction decade culminating in a robot
   takeoff.  The Web will soon be made largely of machines communicating
   with each other.

   Rule:  Cherish failure.  Preferably other people's.  We fail our way
   into the future.  Silicon Valley is brilliant at this.  Since new
   technologies take 20 years to have an overnight success, for an easy
   win look for a field that has been failing for 20 years and build on
   that.

   Rule:  Be indifferent.  Don't confuse the desired with the likely.
   Christian end-time enthusiasts have been wrong for 2,000 years.

   Rule:  Assume you are wrong.  And forecast often.

   Rule:  Embrace uncertainty.

   Saffo ended with a photo he took of a jar by the cash register in a
   coffee shop in San Francisco.  The handwritten note on the jar read,
   "If you fear change, leave it in here."

                                           --Stewart Brand

   PS...  You can find different rules and a more strait-laced
   presentation by Saffo in his recent Harvard Business Review article,
   "Six Rules for Effective Forecasting,"  [1]here.

--

   Stewart Brand -- sb at gbn.org

   The Long Now Foundation - http://www.longnow.org
   Seminars & downloads: http://www.longnow.org/projects/seminars/

References

   1. http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp?ml_action=get-article&articleID=R0707K&ml_issueid=BR0707&ml_subscriber=true&pageNumber=1&_requestid=37598

----- End forwarded message -----
-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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