On Predicting The Future
What will life after corona look like?
I’ve read many predictions about what life might look like after coronavirus. Economists predict how many industries will collapse. Investors predict what the stock market will do. Doctors and health experts predict how our daily behavior might change.
I get that we’re all longing for certainty. In modern life, that’s what we’re used to. As kids, we grow up with the idea that there’s a natural progression in life. We tell our kids that “if you go to college, you can get a well-paid job, and you’ll be safe.”
Is that true? Maybe it works out for some people. But there are enough jobless people with college degrees right now. The same was true when I graduated after the financial crisis of 2008/2009.
When you’re reading a prediction from an expert, you’re participating in that person’s experiment. Human beings have been making hypotheses for centuries.
That’s basically the foundation of the scientific method. A person just like you and me gets an idea and asks, “What if?” Right now, there are a lot of what ifs.
Proof comes after the fact
The nature of making predictions is that you can only prove them in hindsight. That’s why scientists are great at explaining the past…
