Bristol Festival of Ideas - How Should We Think About the Future?

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Fishnut
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Bristol Festival of Ideas - How Should We Think About the Future?

Post by Fishnut » Tue Feb 18, 2020 9:59 pm

Bristol Festival of Ideas has an awesome catalogue of events and this one seems even more prescient given the furore over 'superforecaster' Andrew Sabinsky. His grasp of science appears to be slim but does it mean the idea of forecasting is stupid or just that we shouldn't be employing arrogant privileged arsewipes to do the predicting?
We are addicted to prediction, desperate for certainty about the future. But the complexity of modern life won’t provide that; experts in forecasting are reluctant to look more than 400 days out. History doesn’t repeat itself and even genetics won’t tell you everything you want to know. Ineradicable uncertainty is now a fact of life. But thinking ahead is what we all do: planning careers, families, companies, countries. So how can we face the future if we don’t know what it holds?

Margaret Heffernan’s new book, Uncharted: How to Map the Future, argues that not knowing the future must not leave us passive. She looks at long-term projects developed over generations that could never have been planned the way that they have been run. Experiments, led by individuals and nations, discover new options, and radical exercises in forging new futures with wildly diverse participants allow everyone to create outcomes together that none could do alone. Existential crises reveal the vital social component in resilience. And preparedness – doing everything today that you might need for tomorrow – provides the antidote to passivity and prediction.

This session challenges us to resist the false promises of technology and efficiency and instead to mine our own creativity and humanity for the capacity to create the futures we want and can believe in.
I went to a panel chaired by Margaret Heffernan last year and she was excellent so have high hopes that this event will be too.
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Re: Bristol Festival of Ideas - How Should We Think About the Future?

Post by Herainestold » Wed Feb 19, 2020 1:55 am

You mean there is going to be a future?
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Re: Bristol Festival of Ideas - How Should We Think About the Future?

Post by Fishnut » Wed Feb 19, 2020 8:17 am

There will definitely be a future. Whether or not it's one where humans play a starring role is really up to us I guess.
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Re: Bristol Festival of Ideas - How Should We Think About the Future?

Post by rockdoctor » Wed Feb 19, 2020 5:20 pm

My impression is that the complexity of the modern world leaves far to many variables and degree of freedom to make any meaningful or useful predictions. The incredibly rapid decline of cash money in the UK, the rise of drones and all their benefits and problems, the impact of social media on society are just three things I doubt we had enough info to predict before they happened. Humans seem to reach tipping points and then fashion and crowd-behaviour make sudden big shifts a new norm.
Technological breakthroughs often take us in unexpected directions, even when we knew they were coming...

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Re: Bristol Festival of Ideas - How Should We Think About the Future?

Post by Fishnut » Wed Feb 19, 2020 6:35 pm

Tim Harford has a review of the book that forms the basis of the talk. This quote seems to get to the crux of her thesis.
“What matters most isn’t the predictions themselves but how we respond to them, and whether we respond to them at all,” she writes. “The forecast that stupefies isn’t helpful, but the one that provides fresh thinking can be.”
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Re: Bristol Festival of Ideas - How Should We Think About the Future?

Post by CuddysCave » Fri Feb 21, 2020 9:51 pm

That sounds really interesting, thanks. Although I get the Festival of Ideas mailings I don’t always spot the relevant ones. I have been wondering how to form an 8 year outlook for a complicated and potentially changing set of circumstances in my current job. So far I haven’t come up with a more systematic approach than asking other people (suppliers, management consultants, etc.) and that hasn’t proved terribly enlightening.

Now booked.

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Re: Bristol Festival of Ideas - How Should We Think About the Future?

Post by Pucksoppet » Wed Feb 26, 2020 1:50 pm

Hopefully they have a presentation from Prof. H. Seldon of Streeling University.

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Re: Bristol Festival of Ideas - How Should We Think About the Future?

Post by Fishnut » Fri Mar 06, 2020 8:01 pm

It's the interval. The first half has been very interesting with talks from Margaret Heffernan and then 3 people who's names I don't remember. She spoke about how it's impossible to predict the future and attempts to do so are doomed to failure by drawing false analogies with past events and missing the effect of differences.

The next speaker was from Dublin talking about Citizens Assemblies and how they've helped make people feel more involved in democracy and helped legitimise referenda results even for those who voted against the winning side.

Then we had a woman from the Welsh Assembly talking about the Commission for Future Generations and how it's allowing them to produce legislation and decisions that aren't just about short-term gain. It was a fascinating idea and one I want to look into more.

The final speaker was the head of the Terrence Higgins Trust speaking about dealing with crises where you don't have time for 5-year plans and the like. He spoke very movingly about the AIDS epidemic and how life-changing - life-giving - antiretroviral therapies were. He drew interesting comparisons between the AIDS crisis and climate change and ended by saying we cannot be passive.

After the break there's a panel discussion and questions from the audience.
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Re: Bristol Festival of Ideas - How Should We Think About the Future?

Post by Pucksoppet » Fri Mar 06, 2020 8:09 pm

Thank you for the report back.

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Re: Bristol Festival of Ideas - How Should We Think About the Future?

Post by Fishnut » Fri Mar 06, 2020 8:14 pm

Should clarify that when I said you can't predict the future the point is you can't make specific predictions. So, as the first question is, inevitably, about coronavirus, we couldn't have predicted that COVID-19 would break out in Wuhan last December but we could, and did, predict that there would be an epidemic, probably for something like flu and we can prepare for that. So general prediction is fine - stock market will collapse again, there will be an epidemic, there will be earthquakes, etc. But we can't predict when, where and how and focusing on that means that we miss the things we can do.
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Re: Bristol Festival of Ideas - How Should We Think About the Future?

Post by Fishnut » Fri Mar 06, 2020 10:54 pm

I had to leave before the end to catch my bus but the discussion was really interesting. I'll try and put a blogpost together about the evening and if I do I'll share a link here in case anyone's interested.
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