Pragmatic Realism Better Than Lofty Rah-Rah Rhetoric

Sorry, but hiding responses to your articles (e.g., Seize the Future!) is a type of censorship the future doesn’t need. Thus, this separate article.

Any professionally trained futurist seeks pragmatic realism and makes forecasts based on probabilities. This is based on a mix of trends, events, images and actions, which unfortunately isn’t what you’ve describe.

When you say, “The problem with looking at the future…is that we’re used to trying to spot future trends and connect them with the past. But…when the future breaks with the past, that practice doesn’t work,” you’ve committed a professional cardinal sin. (see >^ Why the Future Ain’t What it Once Was)

The key is knowing what trends and events (i.e., simply discontinuities for you, nonlinearities for most others) are consequential. This starts with a framework for nested evolving systems. Moreover, while all consequential trends end, they follow a lifecycle. Furthermore, trends and events constitute a yin-yang continuum. (see Macroscopic Evolutionary Paradigm)

When you say, “In a time of discontinuities, what you need isn’t trend spotting, but new intuitions. Today, all good foresight…works to develop intuitions about how change works, now. To develop intuitions, we tell stories,” you’re either naïve or biasing what you’re conveying. Everything is not relative.

The fact is, ALL good foresight reflects a probabilistic scenarios incorporating trends, events, and actions into images (i.e., stories) (see Our Twilight Zone & What Comes Next, or Civilization’s Anti-Human, Not Machines).

Finally, as to your reaction to the new political milieu, clearly you’re not sufficiently circumspect (see Doc Says — Our Emotions, Institutions and Technological Capabilities Are Mismatched or Only 6 Possible Outcomes in Next 20 Years [ — 4 are Bad — ])

Doc Huston