Notes on Prediction
Note: After writing this I found a Scott Alexander post similar to this that changes all my beliefs on the topic and renders this post half-obsolete, as is expected in any post by Scott.
Engel
There is this interesting phenomenon of people describing their current times and predicting based on it, and the conditions changing immediately after their observation. I noticed this after getting Engel’s The Condition of the Working Class in England. Where he describes doom and gloom and the honestly retched state the Industrial Revolution brought to England. The period Engel observed is now called Engels Pause. Mainly because Robert C Allen likes to spit on the graves of communists. Wikipedia says the period 1790-1840 is when productivity increased rapidly but real wages stagnated.
This means that the pause was already over by the time Engles observed it. Looking at some papers looks like you could extend the pause up to the mid-1850s, depending on the data you use. The difference could be that one set of data is for London and the other for all of Britain? I don't care enough about getting the years right to look into it closely. Some scholars like Gregory Clark apparently think Engels was Delulu, and everything was fine and dandy and real wages were rising, but Allen thinks Clark is the Delulu polemicist and I chose Allen as My Lord and Savior because he seems like less of a culture warrior.
Pinker
One of the most popular posts on the SlateStarCodex Subreddit is called "
Steven Pinker jinxes the world". It's about how Pinker's predictions about violence are unraveling after the publishing of his book*. I don't have much else to say so go read that and come back.
Fukuyama
After the fall of the Soviet Union Francis Fukuyama declared the End of History. Liberal Democracy is triumphant and has no real challengers. I didn't read his book but I did read the essay it's based on, and let me tell you. I think he is crazy. I consider myself a valiant defender of the Anglophone Analytic tradition in philosophy and seeing someone cite Hegel seriously makes me reconsider their humanity, intelligence, and foresight. So the realization that the biggest defender of American Hegemony thinks some Hegelian Spirit is the sole cause of it, is...terrifying.
Regardless, I wanted to add Fukuyama to the list of the Cosmic Jinxers by citing the threat of Radical Islam, Nationalist Communism, and the Woke Authoritarian Left. However, Fukuyama says:
"Most of these analyses lack any larger conceptual framework for distinguishing between what is essential and what is contingent or accidental in world history, and are predictably superficial. If Mr. Gorbachev were ousted from the Kremlin or a new Ayatollah proclaimed the millennium from a desolate Middle Eastern capital, these same commentators would scramble to announce the rebirth of a new era of conflict."
This basically means that he is the Chad-Wojak with a Large Conceptual Framework and any criticism and doubt by recent events makes you the Virign-Wojak news addict.
I'm not convinced by his analytic framework but I think he is basically right, there aren't that many big threats to liberal democracy at the size of 20th-century communism and fascism. Islamism has already peaked and the Gulf countries are modernizing. But I worry that if we buy into his thesis we will get lazy and our enemies might find a chance. Which brings me to...
Thiel
Yesterday I listened to an episode of Conversations With Tyler, by the eponymous Tyler Cowen, interviewing Billionaire and right-wing philosopher Peter Thiel. As Tyler does with the guests he likes he kept grilling him about the fact that "we'll just muddle through" and worrying too much about the future of Western Civilisation or America or whatever is unnecessary. But Thiel expressed a worry about uttering the forbidden words as if he expected that the optimist incantation would somehow reverse our fortunes.
Maybe the normie view of history where there is lots of possibilities and we have limited predictive power is the right one?
In Islamic culture, there is this thing where whenever you talk hoping for something, like say test results or job applications you have to suffix it with the saying "Inshallah" meaning "if God wills it." So whenever you say that you will get an A or that the recruiters will call back, you have to say Inshallah after, or else you're risking getting cursed or something. My guess is that it reminds you that things are in God's hands, but the additional benefit is to remind God that things are in his hands!
So in conclusion what I'm trying to say is that even if Fukuyama, Tyler, and the boomer optimists are right and we'll be fine, we should avoid talking and gloating about it too much, and remember to say Inshallah after we do.
