Paul Saffo: What Is a Futurist? Video Lecture | Shaping the Future: The New Western World - Personal Skills

it's always intrigued me that a person
could be and make a business out of
being a futurist so how does that work
what are your how do your clients
what do they get when they hire a
futurist usually when someone wants to
look into the future they're in an
industry the teaser poised for a
fundamental change or has just gone
through a fundamental change and they've
been what the heck is going on so it's
that moment in time when people realize
that the uncertainty is a whole lot
greater than they realized and so what I
do and when I come in is I help them
understand uncertainty
I don't predict you know yeah I know you
heard you say that but well say more if
you can't about Yogi Berra trainer Yogi
Berra put it right when he said
prediction is really difficult
especially when it's about the future
prediction is logically impossible as
long as you believe we're in a world
where our actions in the present affect
outcomes in the future so the way I
think about looking into the future is
that you're looking at a into a cone of
uncertainty or basically mapping a cone
of uncertainty and say how broad is the
cone what's inside it what are the
signposts to look for that a particular
future is coming to past and and in that
sense the trick is if you draw that cone
too narrowly you're gonna miss things
you're gonna be surprised and that's
generally not a good thing right if you
draw it too broadly you're gonna end up
wasting your time doesn't mean much
looking at stuff it's boiling there so
you've got a cup of salt so the art is
to get it just right and then figure out
the granularity you need to to look out
you know I'm while you're describing
that I'm thinking of that classic sort
of hurricane prediction thing that
widens as it goes but but as each day
ticks forward a new cone gives you a
little better idea of which were the
real outliers and which of the outliers
has become the mainstream
well it's no coincidence I mean as a
forecaster I'm basically an intellectual
ragpicker who will pick up methods
anywhere I can on the cone
uncertainty is a phrase consciously
borrowed from meteorologist oh don't get
it yeah and like that then like a
meteorologist looking at the track of a
hurricane
if you're going to forecast and for
God's sake forecast often you know right
keep a rating based a tree forecast
based on information and and not be
afraid to yeah the trend of the forecast
is a very good indicator of sort of what
is happening as a pilot I often watch
the sequence of forecasts and if they're
worsening the weather is going to be
worse than forecast right and you know
when you're flying your plane that the
futures are arriving awfully quickly
yeah you'd like to have some general
code right and so you know in that sense
but do you think I mean maybe I'll toss
this out as an idea but do you think in
some ways that it's harder to predict
the immediate future than it is the sort
of intermediate or even far future I
mean if you squint at the future you can
see the outline of what's likely
possibly to happen but if you try and
figure what the stock market is gonna do
tomorrow it's virtually all right well
the first thing about forecasting is to
know when not to make a forecast when
things are so uncertain or they're just
too many variables and again avoiding
the trap of trying to predict that is
always the road to ruin