Futurological thinking: what is it and why?

Psychologies: Is it possible to explain in a clear and simple language what futurological thinking is?

Danila Medvedev: Oh sure. It’s like history, but about the future. At school, in history lessons, we were often repeated phrases like: “A people who do not remember their history are doomed to repeat mistakes.” But today we have the ability to predict the future a little more accurately than just saying: “Nothing will change, everything will be as it was.”

Thanks to the development of social sciences – sociology, political science, economics, psychology – and management sciences, today we better understand how society develops, better understand the laws of this development.

Let me give you an example: it was found that most companies begin to die after 10-20 years of their existence. Any company in any country does not last long. Now there are practically no organizations that have existed for a very long time. At the same time, cities, if we also consider them as a certain structure, organization, exist for a very long time and do not die.

But still, long-lived companies do exist. It turns out that certain conditions are simply needed for this?

There are few such companies. And there are practically none that have existed for at least a hundred years. At the same time, cities exist for some reason for a very long time – Rome, Paris, Berlin … Rome, after the fall of the Roman Empire, it would seem, died: everyone left the city, the population was zero, there were no food supplies … but then people returned anyway. The larger the cities, the more efficient they are. This means that we can predict what will happen to parts of society. This is part of the foundation on which futurology stands.

For example, two hundred years ago. Back then, every country had a dominant culture, a set of values, and people to whom you could come and say, “My father, tell me, how should I live my life?” And he answered: “From Monday to Saturday you do this, on Sunday you do this. Here are all your instructions.” This trend persisted for a very long time, it was also relevant in the middle of the XNUMXth century.

But then what Friedrich Nietzsche called “the death of God” happened: in modern culture, primarily in Western culture, this unambiguous landmark disappeared. Traditional institutions have been preserved, but a person has a huge choice: you can go for advice to an Orthodox priest, a Buddhist, you can not go to anyone, you can read popular science articles on a topic of interest. There is no more certainty.

What should modern man be guided by?

This is the first reason why futurology is important: we need to somehow navigate the future. Previously, everything was clear: you will be the same as it was with your father, grandfather, great-grandfather. Everyone was a blacksmith, and you will be a blacksmith. And your last name is also Kuznetsov. But today we understand that things are changing, and not always for the better.

To form such an understanding, tools are needed, and it is desirable that we master them at school. This process has already begun: there are futurological projects and congresses in schools. In Kazan, for example, the Talent University is engaged in the upbringing, training, and coordination of gifted children.

During the two-day session, specialists together with the children come up with what they would like to do in life. And there are also very young children from elementary school. At this age, the child begins to form an image of what he wants to do in the future.

I gave a lecture in Yekaterinburg about the professions of the future, and after the lecture the children had to choose what they want to do. 80% chose professions one way or another connected with immortality, revival. And that’s okay. Previously, we could offer children only the explanation “Your dog is now in heaven with your great-grandmother,” but now there are alternatives that are more useful.

What other reasons make this science important?

The second reason can be formulated as follows: the ability to predict life. Now the anti-aging direction is developing very actively, scientists are working on life extension. If you know that you can live a hundred years, how will you use this information? What if you have a thousand years?

It doesn’t matter what social level a person is on, how much money or power he has. You need to decide what to do next, how to plan your life and activities. You can change your profession at any time in life, until we are near death. You can comprehend the world that surrounds us, determine the goal, understand what skills and resources are lacking to achieve it.

At the same time, goals should not be set for a month or a year, as most people do, but for 10, 20, 30 years ahead. And say to yourself: “I want to do this and I will try until I succeed.”

Are there special techniques by which a person can predict the success or failure of his undertakings?

Certainly. The first point: you need to develop a serious approach to work. This does not mean that you need to choose a fashionable or prestigious profession. You need to understand what your career path will allow you to achieve in twenty years.

Now people rarely choose this approach. A similar level of conscious and responsible approach can be observed, for example, among cosmonauts who have been studying for years, must constantly monitor their physical shape and health, and undergo selection programs. But it could be adopted by everyone, not only astronauts.

Any person who wants to work in the technologies of the future can go to study – independently or at the correspondence department. You don’t even have to quit your job to do it. And after some time – for example, after three years – you can already choose a new profession and begin to develop in it.

And here it is quite difficult to build the future on your own – you need to have a lot of information that is not exactly hidden, but not particularly distributed. This is information about how society is managed, in which direction it is moving, how complex systems work in general, for example, cities – what we talked about at the very beginning. It has to be collected bit by bit, and much still depends on how the society in which a person lives relates to this or that idea.

For example, in most countries people have a very conservative idea of ​​the life trajectory and its finiteness. Please note: in almost all Hollywood films and cartoons, immortal characters are negative. The one who strives for immortality and prolongation of life is bad. This can be seen even in Star Wars.

Of course, there are films that contradict this idea, but in general one gets the feeling that some secret censorship committee forbids talking about how people can live long and still do well.

It is important for everyone to understand whether we want to take responsibility for our future. After all, you can not take it, but rely on, for example, pension funds. Another question is whether it is worth hoping. You don’t have to be an advanced analyst to make predictions. If we want to be in charge of our future, we need to take as much information about it as possible. For some, these are ten articles in scientific journals, for some, a radio broadcast, for some, a book on futurology.

It is important to identify reference points for yourself – to understand what result you want to achieve in 10, 20, 30 years. If there is such a plan, a person will rely on it. This does not mean that everything will work out by itself, but at least it will give a context in which to act. Today we have access to almost any knowledge. You can develop yourself if you understand in which direction you want to move. You can learn to approach your future rationally.

Is this taught in your courses?

Yes, for example, we have a short but intensive course on applied rationality: we teach people to develop rational skills and apply them both in work and in personal life. This helps to correctly assess what is happening and identify options for behavior.

People who try to figure it out on their own usually come up with some popular planning and time management methods, install an application on their phone, tick off it. But it doesn’t work that easy. Several levels of planning and analysis are needed. And it is necessary and useful for any person.

For example, a person receives the result of an analysis for some disease. But the result can be false positive and false negative. In order to calculate what is the probability of getting this or that result, one must first understand what is the general probability of such a disease in a particular person. If, for example, this probability is 1 in 100,000, then the probability of a false positive result is much higher.

But most people don’t think like that, they haven’t been taught that. And they taught that homeopathy works and “it helped a neighbor, so I need it the same way.” Not knowing how to calculate probabilities, a person incurs losses.

How difficult is it to master? Is it necessary to be a mathematician or a physicist, or is rational thinking available to everyone?

We have a course on Applied Rationality, which is designed for 3-4 lessons, one lesson per week. There are face-to-face groups, they are focused on completely different people and will suit the “ordinary” person from the street. After completing the course, a person receives the skills of rational thinking, a practical result. With any task you need to be able to work. But for this you need at least a little independence and a desire to make informed decisions, and not rely on someone else’s advice.

It turns out that this is such a skill – to ask yourself the right questions and look for the right information?

Yes. And based on this information, build a predictive model: “If I do this, then this will happen.” Then a person is taught to work with preferences – after all, there are judgments about the world, but there are preferences.

Judgments about the world need to be able to check and understand how they are connected. And preferences are the ability to simulate different options for the future in your head and understand what you like. For example, when a child graduates from school and does not know what he wants to be, this means that he does not know how to work with his preferences.

Many adults also do not know how to work with preferences.

Yes, because they weren’t taught it. They don’t know what they want and use template solutions: “I want a bigger salary, I want a seaside vacation, I want to buy this, I want to learn something.” But at the same time, a person does not understand what kind of life he would like to live in the next five years.

Many people cannot dream about something because they do not understand how to work with a library of possible desires. And the best thing they can do is stumble upon a list of “XNUMX things you must do in a lifetime” in some blog and try to complete all the points: skydive, go to Las Vegas, but this is not the wisest an approach. Our time resource is limited, which means that if we want to live meaningfully, we need to choose fifteen of these hundred points. And take your choice seriously.

Recent studies have shown that more than half of people believe that they are engaged in meaningless work. Clerks, officials, low-level managers who fulfill various bureaucratic requirements do not understand the existing alternative, do not understand what to do with the sense of meaninglessness. They find themselves in a kind of trap. And to get out of it, you need to be able to ask yourself basic questions.

How do you learn to ask these basic questions?

The starting point can be a description of the past, present and future of our world. There should be some basic model that describes what seems to a person the most important and interesting. Let’s say for someone it’s nature. And this person starts reading a book about ecology, about the effect of pesticides and chemicals. Read it and say: “I want to save our world from such problems.” For another person it will be a book about education and science, for a third person it will be about space. But in any case, there must be some kind of frame.

And then you can already set practical goals – they determine the issues and solutions. And these questions with solutions should arise in my head today.

The same example with space, where many people dream of flying. You can just dream about it, or you can figure out how the space industry is developing in general, what are the ways to ever be on a spaceship. It will also matter in which country a person lives and who works. Having outlined several points, a person will create a frame for himself, will be able to evaluate his success in moving towards the goal.

For me, for example, the most important and interesting are the issues of immortality and the enhancement of intelligence, as well as omnipotence, building a utopia, security, singularity. But this is a fairly wide frame, it requires a developed futurological skill.

And if you set a more “everyday” frame, for example, about raising children, education, career, what advice can you give to people who do not know about futurology?

In fact, these themes are interrelated. Already now there are forecasts according to which many professions that were recently considered in demand will lose their relevance in the future. For example, a lawyer. Therefore, if parents think what to prepare a child for, you need to study the professions of the future. You can simply enter this phrase into a search engine, you can look at the Skolkovo Atlas of Professions.

For example, agriculture is here to stay, but what you need to study in this area is not what you studied 50 or 20 years ago. Now there are a huge number of methods of intensive training, which can begin almost from the age of 1-2 years. You need to know what technologies are available and how to use them. Just giving your child a tablet or smartphone is a bad idea. It is more interesting and productive to use some kind of biofeedback devices, to experiment with neural interfaces.

It used to be a popular idea that the baby in the womb should be allowed to listen to classical music. And now you can use direct magnetic stimulation of the brain, substances that during pregnancy have a positive effect on the future intelligence of the child – make it not just “normal”, but “above average”. This can and should be read in open sources, this is not secret information.

Futurology implies a high level of desire to be responsible for one’s own life not only now, in the moment, but also in the future. And this is what you can learn – to see yourself in the future, to understand what needs to be done for this future now. This is the responsibility for yourself, your family and your life.