MetaFilter posts tagged with future and prediction

Brief History of the Twenty-First Century

phrontist — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:34:12 -0800

A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics...and Voter Polls

jeanmari — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 09:40:29 -0800

Margins of Error We can't seem to let the future alone. Even though we often get predictions about it so wrong. Because, as Niels Bohr once said, "Prediction is very difficult. Especially if it is about the future." What are the origins of political polling (beware of awful interface design)? And how is political polling evolving?

Bricks from ashes

klangklangston — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:55:30 -0800

Superstruct: An alternate reality game of future survival from the woman who brought you I Love Bees. Starting soon.

Biggest breakthroughs of the next 50 years

jeffmshaw — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 16:52:24 -0800

What will be the biggest scientific breakthroughs of the next 50 years? As part of their 50th anniversary celebration, the New Scientist asked 70 prominent minds for ideas on the subject. You can read the thoughts of scientists like Freeman Dyson, Benoit Mandelbrot and Jane Goodall individually, or browse by topic. For example, eight thinkers have something to say about alien life. The links to browse by topic can be found at the beginning of the main link. Also, compare with this thread about similar predictions from 1950.

Miracles You’ll See In The Next Fifty Years

MetaMonkey — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 23:24:03 -0800

Miracles You’ll See In The Next Fifty Years (Feb, 1950)
Some more up-to-date predictions: science, invention, space travel, colonisation, immortality, water shortage, flooding, nanotech, techno-apocalypse, extinction, mental health, smart machines, robots, mind uploading, AI, Asia, economics, demographics, goverance, cities. What is your prediction?

Probability senses tingling batman!

jeffburdges — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 07:38:01 -0800

Experts can suck at predicting the future. Their intuitive sense of probability is no more developed than lay-people's. A classic experiment is to present two indistinguishable choices are presented, but with unequal probability of reward. Humans look for complex patterns, which don't exist, and preform quite poorly. Rats quickly recognize the choice with higher probability, and preform optimally.

"A Possible Declining Trend for Worldwide Innovation,"

stbalbach — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 23:22:14 -0800

Review of "A Possible Declining Trend for Worldwide Innovation," by Jonathan Huebner, who says the rate of human innovation has been steadily declining since the industrial revolution, and is headed toward an "economic limit" of very low apparent innovation that will be reached circa 2038. As one potential explanation, we must consider the possibility that human-initiated innovation, like energy consumption and population growth, is a process that naturally saturates with rising global income levels and technological intelligence--as technological progress increasingly satisfies current human needs, individuals become less concerned with technological development and turn more toward personal growth. More articles from Acceleration Watch.

Imagining the Internet

rushmc — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 09:11:34 -0800

Imagining the Internet. What will become of the internet? And how far off have prognosticators been about it thus far? Submit your own predictions, if you dare.