Thread by @iyad_elbaghdadi

So many people base their predictions of the future upon their ideas of what is normal, and base their ideas of what is normal upon their experience of what has happened before.

This makes them tediously uncreative, unable to separate the signal from the noise, unable to predict future trends, and readily prone to falling into cynicism traps.

Many of these people end up drinking their own Kool-Aid. They convince themselves of something based upon selected evidence and biased interpretation of said evidence, then they predict the future based upon their own constructed biases.

They do this in one of two directions. Either they fail to pick up on clear signs that something important is happening (or about to happen); or they treat outcomes that weren't inevitable at all as inevitable.

I could state a few examples but I'll leave it here. I'll just remind myself that I shouldn't waste my time or energy on people who don't get it. It's not my job to make the cheerfully ignorant see. I'll show them the way if they ask, but if they choose arrogance, then fuck them.

Those who think about a topic once a year have no business brainfarting all over the work of people who think about it every single waking hour.

This is a time of rapid and big changes. The norm is shifting. Predicting that the future is going to be just more of the present is a good heuristic in stable times, but these aren't. People who do this will be at a big disadvantage.