Lecture 46: The Next 100 Years

The Next 100 Years ........................................................................

Lecture 46

As I worked on these lectures, I soon realized that historians seem to

be more or less the only people who refuse to think seriously about

the future.

A

fter surveying 13 billion years, can we resist peering into the future?

I think not. Indeed, I will argue that it is appropriate and necessary

to do so. I was ¿ rst prompted to do this by students who argued

that, after surveying 13 billion years, it seemed odd to stop abruptly in the

present moment. As a professional historian, I shared the historian’s taboo on

considering the future. So I had to think hard about how I should approach

such a topic. Why and how should historians study the future? I soon realized

that thinking about the future is not such a strange activity! On the contrary,

all human societies have tried to predict the future, and many professionals

in our own society—from stockbrokers to gamblers—make a good living by

doing so.

Furthermore, we must take our thoughts about the future seriously because

they may inÀ uence what we do today, and that in turn may shape the future.

Besides, all organisms constantly try to predict; indeed, they are designed by

natural selection to do so. Every time you act, you have to predict the likely

outcome of your action, and sometimes (as in crossing a busy road) it’s vital

to predict wisely.

How should we think about the future? Rule 1 is that the future really is

unpredictable. Nineteenth-century physicists often claimed we could predict

the future if we knew the motion and position of every particle in the

Universe. Quantum physics has shown this is not true. At the very smallest

scales there is a certain indeterminacy in the behavior of the Universe. Rule

2 is that those who think carefully about the future get it right more often

(and, if they are stockbrokers or gamblers, earn more money) than those who

do not. Rule 3 is that we must begin with existing trends—in other words,

with history. A horse’s “form” is not a perfect guide to performance, but it’s

better than nothing.