Ask me in ten years.
Funny thing about time, I won’t be able to see myself in ten years for ten years.
It’s a river I’ve never run before. How could I possibly know where it goes?
PROMPT: 10 Years
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Tag Archives: forecasting
PROMPT: Biggest Challenge
Daily writing prompt
What is the biggest challenge you will face in the next six months?
I certainly have my ideas, but I’m not going to jinx it or create a self-fulfilling prophecy on the matter. Sometimes the easy is hard and the hard comes easy, and — above all — people suck at making predictions (except in the case of self-fulfilling prophesies.)
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PROMPT: Three Years
What will your life be like in three years?
I have no idea. That’s the beauty of life, and the curse of living during period in which technology will soon grow completely beyond our control. Life might be an ever-better version of what it is now, or I might be living in a cave trying to stay out of the way of the war between Skynet and our would-be Alien overlords. Or I might be farming in a world that has EMP’d itself back to the Stone Age to avoid being overtaken by technology. Nothing is certain but that change will come.
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PROMPT: 10 Years
If there’s anything that I learned in all those years of Social Science education, it’s that forecasting is a sucker’s game.
I don’t know where I’ll be, but I hope it’s someplace I never saw coming. #embracethechaos.
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PROMPT: Evening
What are you doing this evening?
Probably just reading and otherwise restfully winding down from the day.
But who can know what the future holds?
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PROMPT: Challenge
What is the biggest challenge you will face in the next six months?
I couldn’t possibly say. I make no claims to clairvoyance. Life happens. Sometimes the complicated things go smoothly and the simple things frustrate.
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BOOKS: A Few Rules for Predicting the Future by Octavia Butler
A Few Rules for Predicting the Future: An Essay by Octavia E. ButlerMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
Release Date: April 16, 2024
This brief essay by one of science fiction’s greats, Octavia Butler, discusses her thoughts about forecasting the future and why it’s worth doing even though it’s so difficult (at some level of precision– even impossible.) Butler tells a few stories about questions from fans, being prescribed medication, and growing up during the space race and Cold War, stories that cleverly present her thoughts on the challenging art of anticipating the future.
It should be pointed out that this is a very short work. Even the sixty-ish page count is deceptive as that is accomplished with lots of white space, with large fonts, and even with colorful blank pages (and / or artwork.) If you’re paying full book price for it, be forewarned that, as clever and quotable as it is, it’s essentially magazine article length (and not a long article at that.)
If you can get your hands on this essay for a price commensurate with its word count, I’d highly recommend reading it.
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PROMPT: Three Years
What will your life be like in three years?
Who can say? I could be dead. I could be one of the last humans alive after the next pandemic or a nuclear Holocaust or a solar flare that sends humanity back to the Stone Age, or some combination of these and / or other disasters. I could be sitting where I currently sit, doing what I’m currently doing.
I’m no fortune-teller. (If there’s one thing my time as a social scientist taught me, it’s that people think they are much better at making predictions than they are.)
Tiger Riding for Beginners 