Predicting the future by projecting the present

I’m an old practitioner of this kind of projection (see my novel Wolf Time), and I think there may be a distinction here. I’d say you’ve got two different phenomena–trajectory of progress and trajectory of decomposition. I think it’s harder to know what improvements will come in the future than to guess how a system on the decline will deteriorate. The process of progress can be very diverse, while the process of deterioration seems (to me) to be pretty predictable.

Warren Buffett, probably the most astute investor of our time, bought a large chunk of the Washington Post on the assumption that it had a captive, high margin market for advertising. Lo and behold not too many years later the Internet traduced this market causing the balance sheet to move seriously south.

After winning control of Congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008, the liberal pundits waxed ecstatically about a liberal era of politics to offset the Reagan era. Lo and behold Obama, Pelosi, et al lurched too far to the left causing a groundswell of opposition that could put paid to the liberal “era.”

Sic transit gloria mundi. [ Quickly pass the glories of the world.]

Prediction circa 1990: computers will bring about a paperless society.

If I remember correctly, there have been studies showing that the amount of paper in the world has actually increased. And of course, individuals with computers print all sorts of things out on paper, including photos from their digital cameras.

Back in the 1930’s, Vannevar Bush imagined something like what we now have in computers. He called it a “memex.” It was a “device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.”

Of course, even this prediction was stuck in the technology of the day, as Bush imagined this wonderful machine would be micro-film based.

If you want a gross misstep along these lines, let’s talk about the actuarial assumptions for Social Security, Medicare, and most pensions……Pollyanna herself would find them grossly optimistic.

(“you mean if government promises to take care of people in old age, they might not bother to have as many kids–and in doing so will wreck our actuarial assumptions? Oops!”)

Really, virtually any prediction coming out of government, for that matter, will ignore the reality that projecting the present is to ignore the side effects of the change just made.

Bike Bubba @ 5: LOL. How about that prediction that Obamacare would run $10 billion in the black during its first decade, and that everyone who wanted to could keep their old coverage?

Don, that’s actually a slightly different phenomenon. The Social Security disaster is simply an oversight; failing to consider that Social Security will itself change actuarial assumptions. Eminently forgiveable in 1937; not so forgiveable to continue the charade today, of course.

Regarding the health insurance deform act, those claims were made without any statistical or actuarial support whatsoever, and in general were made contrary to the best estimates of the actuaries and others in the know.

In short, the Obamacare errors are not mistakes. They are lies.

“It accuses the USPS of acting like Kodak, which hung onto its chemical film business even after the digital camera was invented.” Okay, isn’t this a bit overstated (even if that’s the fault of the referred-to article, and not Veith’s summary of it)? Kodak did and does develop digital cameras. I owned one back in 2000 or so. I don’t know the details of Kodak’s business plans and maneuvers, but I don’t think they were entirely blind to the change that was coming, nor do I blame them for trying to sell film for as long as they could make money from it. But whatever.

tODD’s got a good point. Kodak’s misstep was not in the past decade or so when digital photography became the norm. Rather, their misstep was to abandon camera bodies as a main line of business back in the 1960s or so. Hence, when people no longer needed film, they didn’t have a fallback position.

They’ve worked hard to get back into the “PHD” (push here dummy) camera business, with some success, but it’s hard to catch up when Nikon and Minolta have four decades of experience you don’t have.

This isn’t another example, but it’s worth noting in this context: If you watch movies from the 1980s which are set in the future (e.g. “Alien” or “Blade Runner”) all of the technology looks very 1980s-ish. The only fundamental difference between that technology and the technology which actually was available around the time of the Reagan Revolution is that in the projected future the technology can do more. The projected future is almost always just the present on steroids.