Why Most People Can’t See The Future & How The World Will Change
Let’s talk about what people often get wrong about predicting the future, without really going into the merits of crypto itself.
Through exploring topics like these, we get a better understanding of how to respond rationally to a deflated sense of enthusiasm or belief in the market and the future of crypto, and how you can capitalize on that for personal gains.
Ok, so, as we mentioned, let’s first talk about predicting the future in an educated sense and how most people are so bad at doing it.
The first reason people get the future of crypto and so many other things so wrong is that they dedicate about five minutes to looking at something before they form an opinion on it.
That isn’t thinking.
That’s our monkey brain running a psychological heuristic that it is completely unequipped for. It’s the part of our brain called the hypothalamus. It plays a major role in basic biological drives related to survival, including the so-called Four F’s, fighting, fleeing, feeding, and mating. It’s not competent at understanding anything new and novel. We have to constantly train it. It’s a survival machine.
Think about how people responded to the first cars. Oh, what’s that machine, I don’t trust that, look spews black smoke everywhere, it hardly moves fast, it gets stuck in the mud. Why would I ever get rid of my trusty horse?
This is a nice transition into the second major reason people get the future so wrong is it goes against everything they understand about the world. Think about the fates of companies like Sears or Blockbuster. They mistook the past for the future and they paid a heavy price by losing their illustrious throne as the market roared past them. Paradigm shifts and disruption define humans and our past. To see the future you have to be able to step outside of yourself, forget your past successes and see beyond your current understanding.
Similar to discussing why Sears and Blockbuster failed, a third major reason people fail to see the future of crypto is because it challenges their position of power. That’s why Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and other major bankers all declare Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as a “fraud” or a “scam”. The powerful stay powerful by quashing anything that stands to challenge them. And there are few institutions as powerful as the banking and finance industries. Which is why they are hellbent on getting on major news networks every day and casting doubt on the potential of cryptocurrencies, until of course they come out with their own versions.
The fourth major reason people fail to see potential is that they mistake their opinion for reality. Simply because you believe something to be true doesn’t mean it is. I am fully aware that simply because I believe in the future of cryptocurrencies and their potential, does not mean it is guaranteed to become reality. But I am willing to admit that to myself and to you. Most people can’t do that. Most people cannot admit they could be wrong about something. This absolutely goes back to our biology.
Another thing people are bound by their biology and thus get the future wrong is a complete and total lack of patience.
The waiting is the hardest part. It takes patience to let things develop naturally.
Bitcoin has been around for almost a decade now. Critics like to point out that in that time, bitcoin and blockchain have yet to solve anything. They are impatient combined with some of the other reasons we’ve listed.
Innovations require mishaps and disappointments and tenacity. When you open your plan to the harshness of reality, things tend to break apart. Truth and time are whetstones that sharpen your ideas.
TCP IP was developed in the 70s but the internet did not enter most people’s homes for several decades afterward.
Things take time.
And so the last reason people are blind to the future of crypto is that they take current inventions, carry them forward and imagine them as the solution to future problems. But this is completely wrong!
Current inventions solve current problems. Future problems will take future solutions.
The steering wheel was invented eight years after the first car. The screwdriver wasn’t invented until three centuries after the screw. The can opener was invented 45 years after the can
It’s nearly impossible to know what form those future solutions will take, but we can do our best to figure out what traits the solution will have so we can recognize it when it gets here.
