In 1964, the Rand Institute released an extraordinary report about the future, in which it detailed the long-term predictions of eighty-two experts. The experts pointed to the date of realization of certain technologies that were then - and some still are today - seen as futuristic and even impossible, including universal vaccination against all diseases caused by viruses and bacteria
In 1964, the Rand Institute released an extraordinary report about the future, in which it detailed the long-term predictions of eighty-two experts. The Rand Institute, it should be noted, is one of the most well-known and respected research institutes in the world, and continues to this day to advise governments, companies and international organizations. When the Rand Institute issues a report on the future, everyone reads it and takes it completely seriously
The experts pointed out the date of realization of certain technologies that seemed then - and some still today - futuristic and even impossible. They were able to correctly predict some of the technological developments: birth control pills, for example, or the accepted and widespread use of substances to change the personality (what is now known as antidepressants). But they also had mistakes, and plenty of them.
One can sneer at the errors of the experts, and I will immediately list some of their more outlandish predictions, but such mockery misses the mark. They were true experts in their field, so it is appropriate to ask what is the reason for their far-reaching mistakes.
I believe that the reasons can be divided into several different types, and I will list several predictions in each of them.
First type of mistakes: reliance on social mindset
Rand's experts believed that by 1980 humans would already land on Mars. This has not happened yet - although today a new race to Mars is starting, but it is also mainly based on sending robots to the red planet. But - and this is important - the technologies to reach Mars probably already existed in 1980. Probably the people we would send to Mars would have stayed there until the end of their lives (a few days or weeks after landing), but they would have at least landed on the planet and thus would have fulfilled the prediction of Rand.
The main reason we haven't sent humans to Mars yet is that there was no need. Huge operations in the field of space - such as the landing on the moon - were carried out mainly because of the "space race". It was the way of the two superpowers of the time - the United States and the Soviet Union - to demonstrate their power and compete with each other outside the Olympics. They invested a huge fortune in the competition to land a man on the moon, all for the sake of reputation only, without being able to translate these grandiose operations into actual profit. No wonder the space race died out in the end, especially when the supremacy of the United States in the field was established. Then it was no longer in anyone's interest to reach Mars. The experts correctly predicted the progress of the technology, but they were wrong in understanding the strategic situation and the mindset that was supposed to lead to its use.
Other mistakes in this style included - other developments in the field of space: the establishment of a manned base on the moon around 1980, and a manned landing on one of Jupiter's moons by 2020 - the same year in which we were also supposed to send humans to Pluto, at that time it was still considered a planet.
Direct votes of the public on political decisions: This development was supposed to be realized in 2000, and Internet technology was indeed supposed to make it possible. But it turns out that politicians are not ready to give up their power so quickly, so voting via the Internet is still limited to countries with a developed digital government like Estonia.
What predictions from today are also based on a certain mindset - and therefore should be suspected? These include, for example, the predictions according to which blockchain technologies will lead to the development of "autonomous distributed organizations" - that is, algorithms that operate in the cloud without direct human supervision - including from the government. These may seem self-evident to a culture based on individual freedom, but there is a chance that they will be assigned out of disgust in the eyes of totalitarian governments.
Second type of errors: errors occur as a result of relying on incorrect predictions
The experts believed that already in 1990 we would be able to produce propulsion materials on the moon. The truth is, if we really had a base on the moon in the early XNUMXs, as they predicted, then this prediction made sense. However, as we have already seen, the predictions about the conquest of space were wrong because they did not take into account the changes in the public and political mood, and as a result the predictions based on those predictions did not come true either.
There is much to learn from this type of mistake, even today. Many futurists - and I am among them - believe that the rate of technological and scientific development will leap forward in the coming decades as a result of the development of artificial intelligences that will be integrated into research. We could, in fact, benefit from millions of 'Einsteins' in every scientific field, who would develop new scientific theories for us and invent medicines with extraordinary abilities (for example, those that could stop aging). But what if we encounter a bump in the road - some kind of obstacle that will not allow artificial intelligence to develop at the speed we expect for it? In this case, many predictions will be delayed for many years.
Third type of mistakes: focusing on the development of only one technology
RAND experts predicted that by 2005 we will already see newspapers and magazines printed in private homes for readers. The impressive thing about the prediction is that it came true in spirit: the press went through a revolution and evolved into the Internet, and today we all enjoy the ability to read articles in the comfort of our homes. But we don't need to print them, and this is due to the dizzying progress in digital technologies.
The experts were not blind to the field of automation. They predicted the existence of robotic servants in every home by the end of the eighties of the last century, for example. But when they envisioned the printing of newspapers in homes, they ignored the miniaturization trend of computers that resulted in every home having a computer with a screen. And if there is a screen - why do you even need a printed newspaper?
Today, I believe that anyone who provides predictions without taking into account the great acceleration in the rate of scientific and technological progress that will provide us with artificial intelligence, falls into the same mistake. But, of course, only on the assumption that I myself am not wrong in predicting the capabilities of the artificial intelligences.
Fourth type of mistakes: not understanding the complexity of a particular achievement
The experts predicted that by the mid-nineties a general vaccine against bacteria and viruses would have been developed. As the recent (not yet over) global pandemic has highlighted, the complexity of this achievement is far greater than experts anticipated. One can also add to this prediction the belief that by the year 2010 we will be able to regrow organs and limbs, or that by the year 2020 we will reach full symbiosis through a direct connection between a human brain and a computer. By the year 2020 or so, we should have succeeded in extending the human lifespan by fifty years. And the highlight: by 2025 we should already be able to tame intelligent animals - apes, dolphins and others - for work needs.
Today we understand better how complex the human body is, and how difficult it is to change basic processes in it without adversely affecting other processes. It will take many more years - although perhaps not as many as we think - before we manage to extend the human lifespan by decades. We also understand how bacteria and viruses evolve in complex ways that make it difficult for us to develop universal vaccines that will work for everyone. And last but not least: it turns out that it's just not easy to train chimpanzees to work for us. And although the United States military really uses trained dolphins to locate underwater mines, it is a very limited use[1].
Fifth type of error: Inability to predict a particular revolutionary technology, or its widespread adoption
The experts believed that a certain development - centralized eavesdropping on every telephone line - would never materialize. They were partially right. To this day, governments have not been able to wiretap phone lines in a centralized way (as far as we know), but the existence of the Internet has meant that there is no need to wiretap phone lines at all. Instead, the governments are able to collect information from the internet providers and the big internet companies (Google, Facebook and the like) in order to track every person wherever they are.
The Internet in its rawest and most primitive form was first invented only in 1969, when the first computers were connected to each other through a primitive network. It was a government project that was limited to the use of the military only, and only in 1981 was Internet access (called ARPANET at the time) extended to the general public... who didn't know what to do with it.
The idea of the internet itself was unusual: a network capable of automatically 'recovering' from a targeted disruption of one of the communication hubs by re-routing the information around it. Such a revolutionary idea - and the thought that it would reach the public - certainly did not occupy a central place in the minds of the experts.
What are the revolutionary technologies that we have trouble predicting today? If I could answer that question, I'd go and make them up myself. But possible examples might include genetic engineering by the masses, understanding gravity and how it can be influenced in artificial ways, or copying the human brain into a computer in a perfect way that preserves the 'soul' - whatever that is.
Sixth type of mistakes: mistakes based on lack of information
A final type of error (at least for this record) is that based on a lack of information. Such, for example, is the prediction according to which already in the coming years (between 2020 and 2030) we will be able to communicate with extraterrestrials. Despite everything we've learned from Dark Files, we just haven't been able to make that connection yet. One of the reasons for this is that we simply do not know how many alien civilizations are out there in space, and there is a real chance that their number is not large - therefore it will also be very difficult to make contact with them in the current century. The experts apparently relied here on an optimistic guess regarding the number of alien civilizations and the means of communication they possess, but the lack of information at their disposal was so great that it is no wonder they failed to predict the future correctly.
But, it must be admitted, the year 2030 has not yet arrived, and perhaps we will still be pleasantly surprised.
Don't underestimate the successes
Despite all these mistakes, the successes of the experts cannot be underestimated either. They successfully predicted developments that seemed completely imaginary to most of their contemporaries: the use of satellites in orbit around the earth, a human landing on the moon, tracking of all the planes in the world, automatic search for legal information, widespread use of computers for tax collection purposes, reliable weather forecasting, engineering Genetic to correct inherited diseases, and much more.
The experts in the report dared to dream and imagine a future very different from the one they knew at the time. They failed to predict well the sixty years after the study, but they provided many policymakers with food for thought and helped them think outside the box about the future. They may have been too ambitious, and may have seen too far in their predictions, but at least they tried and partially failed, instead of closing their eyes and ignoring what might happen - thus they would have failed completely in preparing for the future.
Dr.Roey Tsezana is the author of the books "The Guide to the Future" and "The Rulers of the Future". To the blog - "The Guide to the Future"
More of the topic in Hayadan:
17 תגובות
One word of faith is ignored. The United States today is not in the best condition. All this progress depends on her and if something happens to her what will happen to all this progress. It all depends on the intellectual capital of the United States. Empires eventually sink. I believe in heaven, in my opinion, it is the reason that our son is connected with prophecy, the horizon of prophecy. The area here is literally a Hollywood time machine. And it will be activated at the return of God in His reign in the tunnel of time of the continent of our Tanakh Belt. Today is the era of the last days, I don't know how long it will last. You see how terribly sick the world is. The soul this frequency is so poor. The human fantasy beats amazingly and the soul is so wretched. The circulation in which we live is not natural, many contradictions. Materialism at its peak is so blinding. I am waiting for a great fantasy that contains harmony. The return to the first most romantic Hollywood story in the world back to the future to paradise.
Too bad there isn't a Rand research link.
You can download it as a pdf file from here: https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P2982.html. From there it can be learned that they were fully aware that these were predictions with a low confidence factor, and in fact the research was more intended to test (in retrospect, that is, to do what Dr. Cezana is doing now) the chosen method and the results.
The method, by the way, was iterative: first we gave questionnaires to experts in different fields, in the second step we let each of them examine what the other experts in the field think, and then they tried to form a consensus.
quotes:
"No claims are made, or can be made, for the reliability of teh predictions obtained here"
and:
"Thus, almost anything further we can learn about the basis, the accuracy, and the means for improving such long-term forecasts will be of value"
It is better to wait a little before realizing universal income and not to take a far-reaching step before the apocalypse starts to happen and unemployment rates skyrocket. It is worth remembering that before the industrial revolution over two thirds of the population were engaged in agriculture, and today less than 2%. It turns out that most people turned to doing other things, and in the process raised the standard of living to levels never before known.
In 1955, a turning point occurred in the USA (which many viewed with concern): the number of people employed in "services" exceeded those employed in "industry". Alvin Toffler saw this as the starting point of his third wave.
In a similar way, an entire economy is taking place today, which to a large extent is not very open to the older generation, who may look at it with a rather crooked eye. Today people occupy themselves with drawing computer icons for clients who are willing to pay for it, then they upload amusing anecdotes to reddit about the clients who approached them and were not willing to pay for the work. People who call themselves YouTubers read the stories on their YouTube channels and live on the advertisements and sometimes also on their fame as "influencers". In the meantime, many (or few? I have no way of knowing) make a living playing online games in the many games that are available now.
That's why I suggest that instead of starting to pour lots and lots of money to encourage unemployment, we should take all this money and start investing in the space economy. This is a huge employment engine of millions of people who will be engaged in research, development and construction of colonies on the moon and on Mars, using asteroid resources to build spinning space stations and settle in them tens of thousands of people who will already find something to do out there (even if it amounts to building more space stations, and more space telescopes , and more hotels and resorts in space). What are you waiting for? The basic technologies are already here, and the nation that does it will not only cut a huge coupon, but won't even have to implement universal income.
And one more thing: whoever discusses universal income should be familiar with Dinesh D'Souza's parable of the ladder and the rope, and extrapolate from there. Search on YouTube.
Capital owners are not the enemy, they are the solution that produces work and improves productivity, progress and competitiveness and the motivation to succeed and become a capitalist yourself. It is better to admire, aspire and take an example from them than to hate and envy. Of course as long as it is not capital-rule-newspaper, no monopolies and no cartels and very strict punishment against corruption. An example of such a very successful government is Singapore.
My father, taking money from someone by force and distributing it to others is called theft and it worked great for the Bolsheviks who set up gulags for those who refused.
And who will determine how much income is enough? How many people who today go to simple, physical work to avoid dying of hunger will decide that it is enough for them and they don't need to work at all? As is happening now with unemployment and unemployment in Israel and the USA where they get $600 a week and those with simple jobs refuse to go to work because they get more by sitting at home. And then who will clean streets and toilets and pick in the fields....? And if the salaries in these jobs go up, it will lead to more expensive products and inflation and damage to the poor.
Universal income will lower the value of money in the same way that if you give everyone a million dollars no one is a millionaire and inflation will eat up the value of money. Look at Germany after World War 1, Zimbabwe and Venezuela.
Also, there is always a little more complicated work, like the carters didn't disappear, they became taxi drivers, and the cobblers became shoe sellers....so even doctors and lawyers will not disappear but will help with technology to improve output and productivity as it always was and will be. Farmers didn't disappear with the advent of the tractor, they leveraged it to improve productivity and so will leverage the robots. Robots cannot do everything because otherwise no one will buy anything from the capitalists and their capital will become worthless.
Of course, I do not rule out that in the distant future the technological singularity will occur that will lead to robots with such advanced awareness that they will be able to engineer, program and repair themselves and then all the existing jobs will disappear and no one will work and of course there will be no owners of capital and it is not at all known what will happen that is why it is called a singularity.
Accepting the author's assumption that the experts are "real experts in their field" I read the article on the subject, up to the section that referred to "the prediction that in the coming years (between 2020 and 2030) we will be able to communicate with extraterrestrials". So like this: it's fashionable to talk about extraterrestrials in all kinds of eccentric circles, but it's completely unscientific. The very close to zero probability of creating life in general, and intelligent life in particular - turns the discourse on extraterrestrials into a fashionable joke or nonsense. An "expert" who talks about extraterrestrials as a real possibility, and in such a close window of time, is simply a charlatan or an idiot, one that the multi-millionaire fraudster Erich von Daniken worked hard on, and not a "real expert in his field". From this point the matter in the article started to fade away.
But the matter further diminished when I read the following lines, which this time reflect the opinion of the author of the article on the "forecast" regarding a meeting with super-intelligent extraterrestrials, those who have extraordinary means of communication: "We simply have not been able to make such a contact yet. One of the reasons for this is that we simply do not know how many alien civilizations are out there in space, and there is a real chance that their number is not large - therefore it will also be very difficult to make contact with them in the current century." So it turns out that despite the correct reservations, it is quite clear that even our expert does not think of frosting the sacred belief about the real existence of super intelligent extraterrestrials and meeting them in a not inconsiderable range of more than a hundred years. What a scientific disappointment - in one fell swoop we lost another real expert. But don't worry, even if you delay - isn't the extraterrestrial fictional consolation coming in the time frame of 2030, and the latest when it is in the 22nd century. That's a long time in galactic and cosmic terms, isn't it?
The experts did not foresee the most important thing that happened - anti-scientific leadership in the Western countries.
Stupid leadership damages the intelligence of the voters and thus a snowball is created that keeps getting worse.
Universal income is not a crazy plan. It is bound by reality that the capitalists will recruit robots to work, while the rest of humanity will starve. The only way to balance is to take from them and give the other 99.9% of the public income security.
my father
First of all, the "mistake" regarding communication with extraterrestrials does not stem from a "lack of information" - but from stupidity (mixed with wishful thinking and sensationalism). If we recognized extraterrestrials and they were in the mood to talk - we would talk to them, and if not - then not (as indeed happened). The occurrence of this event, of an encounter with extraterrestrials, is completely random from the point of view of those who try to predict the future, and even the probability of it extends over a very large range in the area of very low probabilities, between "will never happen" and a reasonable probability that it will happen sometime in the next million years. So where is the lack of information here? At most, there is an excess of dreams in Asfamia. And hence this section of failure, of "lack of information" basically remains empty, until they find another example for it.
Secondly, it seems to me that sections 4 and 5, which deal with "not understanding the complexity" and "inability to predict development" are two sides of the same coin, and the coin is the most important element when it comes to the difficulty in predicting the future: the difficulty of predicting scientific-technological breakthroughs, and what that entails. This may mean that what is in the focus of the researchers' eyes (like, say, a cure for cancer, or cars that know how to drive) will be predicted sooner, and what is a little further from them technologically or mentally (like the distribution of computer games) - will completely fall off the table.
Thirdly, not enough space is given to the failure of predicting the full development of technological breakthroughs, and as stated in section 3 - of their cutting edge technological developments. After all, even if we were to go and tell those guys that in 2020 it would be possible to cram 100 billion transistors onto a silicon chip, and as a bonus the prices of computerized storage, and the cost of communication between electronic devices, and also add the shipping costs to space in $ per kg, would they Would they be able to predict the GPS? After all, it was developed for military purposes. And if they had succeeded in predicting the GPS, would they have continued and predicted the WAZE? And if they predicted it, did they predict that there still wouldn't be self-driving cars (outside of labs and trials)?
Fourth, no room is given at all for the failure to predict the impact of the new technology on human culture. Given the forecast for a global computer network, they certainly would not have been able to predict the social networks, the sound box that they would bring in their wake, the censorship and silencing that private companies that hold enormous power can impose on their users, and the cancel culture that they carry in their paws. If anything, at the beginning of the Internet era in the 90s, they predicted exactly the opposite, and no one even suspected that the Bon Ton of the economic-political-technological elites at this time would be gagging in the style of the Chinese regime - their favorite governing model at the time.
In addition, cold and hot wars led the most progress and the period of peace and the relative calm now hinders progress as well
"A glorious failure is better - dreams in a drawer"
Everything new starts with an idea that does not fit the current reality. Without those who imagine a new future, it will not happen.
Only those who dream and then try to make the dream come true can change reality. These predictions are critical for this.
By the way - the RNA vaccines sound interesting in the context of the universal vaccine - as long as it gets approved...
In my opinion, there is a huge failure in predictions.
And it's not just a matter of sometimes being wrong and sometimes being right.
These predictions are very clearly biased to one side.
The predictions are almost always characterized by faster technological development than actuality, with the gap becoming more and more extreme the further away the time is. And again, the fact that the forecast is not accurate is fine, the problem is that their expectation is biased.
And this raises difficult questions for the entire industry.
Because it is clear that in creating a forecast assumptions must be made, but these assumptions were supposed to reflect an average of scenarios, and then on average the forecasts were correct. Why do the experts fail to create forecasts that are at least on average neutral, neither optimistic nor pessimistic.
In Obama's 8 years, NASA's budget increased by 8%. Adjusted for inflation, it decreased by 4%.
In Trump's 4 years (so far), NASA's budget increased by 17%. Corrected for inflation, it rose by almost 9%.
Therefore, the claim of miracles is not within the bounds of truth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA
The years used for comparison: 2008, 2016 and 2020.
What's more, the Artemis program is underway! And it is all the product of the planning of the current administration. And in the coming years, NASA's budget will increase by approximately 22 billion dollars (over about 4 years).
Nissim Yahavibi the Senate led by the "Democrats" blocks the increase in the NASA budget and any other significant move by Trump. The USA was a superpower and economically and technologically half the Soviet Union because it was capitalist. The left promotes illegal immigration to get stronger and finances it with tax money, it will suffocate science and progress when the entire western world becomes the Soviet Union and all resources go to the corrupt elite and crazy social programs like universal income.
Nostradamus
The USA has been under the Trump regime for almost 4 years. NASA's budget did not increase during this period more than during the Obama era.
In other areas there is a significant decrease in scientific budgeting.
But don't let the facts change your opinion!!!!
The problem is that the experts did not predict the disintegration of the Soviet Union and that the USA will switch roles with Russia and become more and more socialist and a lot of money will be wasted on idlers and infiltrators who do not pay taxes and employees of a huge government and there will be no money left for NASA and for important research. Science will slow down as the world becomes degenerate without motivation and competitiveness, the so-called "equality".