It's Hard to Make Predictions

Especially About the Future

The future is notoriously hard to predict. Humans have been trying to do it for as long as we’ve been around, and have been bad at it for just as long.

I’ve been watching with great interest as a TikTok comedian has been reviewing sci-fi movies set in 2024 to see what they got right and what they got wrong.

@alex_falconeThe worst movie I've watched for this series by a lot! #movies #futurism #dogs

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Most movies got very little right about 2024. And the older they are, the further they are from reality. For example, in 2024 we don’t all live in triangle tunnels or houses. Or we’re not all “jacked in” all the time. And we aren’t surrounded by a blue force field, unfortunately.

Just imagine how close you’ll be able to predict what 2075 will look like, for example. We can make some guesses, but in 50 years I bet we’ll be pretty far off.

Why?

Why are we so bad at predicting the future?

Planning Fallacy

Last year, I wrote about why we’re so bad at estimating, which is part of this.

We are blind to certain factors, letting our biases cloud our judgment. We all fall victim to the planning fallacy, leading us to be overoptimistic about what we’re able to do, ignoring possible delays or historical information that would suggest anything but our ideal path.

In the article above, I used the example of the Sydney Opera House. Another great example of the planning fallacy is the Boston Big Dig, which became one of the most expensive highway projects in the US. Planning began in 1982 and work on the new tunnels in Boston began in 1991. Originally, they planned on completing work in 1998 with a projected cost of $2.8 billion. But the project ran an additional 10 years and cost over $8 billion.

As is so often the case with planning, we only plan for the best-case scenario. And we ignore historical information or other similar projects that might give us insight into what our project might look like.

Hidden Motivations

We also have hidden motivations for our predictions.

When we are an expert in a field or are defending a certain position, we may be particularly motivated toward a certain prediction or estimate. As David Epstein explains in his book and in an article for The Atlantic: