New vs. Business-as-Usual Future

katydee

What, in a broad sense, does the future look like? We don't know, and while many have historically made predictions, the track record for such predictions is less than impressive. I have noted that there appear to be two main types of view about the future-- the "new future" and the "business-as-usual future." In order to simplify this discussion, let's restrict it only to the coming century-- the period between 2013 and 2113.

The "new future" is, generally speaking, the idea that the coming century is going to be very different from the present; the "business-as-usual future" is, generally speaking, the idea that the coming century is going to be very similar to the present.

Here are some characteristics of the new future:

Some large-scale event occurs that alters human experience forever-- an intelligence explosion leading to a technological singularity, existential risks leading to human suppression or extinction, global climate change on a massive scale, etc.
Society changes a lot, and in fundamental ways that are difficult to understand. Daily life is vastly altered.
If future history even exists after the dramatic change, it views the coming century as being a critical moment where everything became vastly different, on par with or exceeding the significance of the development of agriculture.

Here are some characteristics of the business-as-usual future:

The intelligence explosion doesn't happen. AI continues to advance in much the same way that it has for the last several decades. More human-capable tasks become automated, but in slow and predictable ways. Intelligence amplification doesn't happen or doesn't yield generally useful results.
The world doesn't end. Global warming ends up being just another doomsday scare. Perhaps a lot of people die in the Third World, but the rest of the world adapts and keeps going much like it has for the last ever. Yellowstone doesn't explode. No asteroids hit the earth. There isn't a nuclear war.
Society doesn't change very much except in superficial ways. Daily life is more or less the same.
Wars might happen. Nations might collapse. But wars have been happening and nations have been collapsing for thousands of years. By and large, the coming century is viewed by future history as not particularly unlike those that came before.

Reference class forecasting seems to indicate that the business-as-usual future is quite likely. But as we know, this is far from a textbook case of reference class forecasting, and applying such techniques may not be helpful. What, then, is a good method of establishing what you think the future will look like?

Here are some characteristics of the new future:

Some large-scale event occurs that alters human experience forever-- an intelligence explosion leading to a technological singularity, existential risks leading to human suppression or extinction, global climate change on a massive scale, etc.
Society changes a lot, and in fundamental ways that are difficult to understand. Daily life is vastly altered.
If future history even exists after the dramatic change, it views the coming century as being a critical moment where everything became vastly different, on par with or exceeding the significance of the development of agriculture.

Here are some characteristics of the business-as-usual future:

The intelligence explosion doesn't happen. AI continues to advance in much the same way that it has for the last several decades. More human-capable tasks become automated, but in slow and predictable ways. Intelligence amplification doesn't happen or doesn't yield generally useful results.
The world doesn't end. Global warming ends up being just another doomsday scare. Perhaps a lot of people die in the Third World, but the rest of the world adapts and keeps going much like it has for the last ever. Yellowstone doesn't explode. No asteroids hit the earth. There isn't a nuclear war.
Society doesn't change very much except in superficial ways. Daily life is more or less the same.
Wars might happen. Nations might collapse. But wars have been happening and nations have been collapsing for thousands of years. By and large, the coming century is viewed by future history as not particularly unlike those that came before.

What, then, is a good method of establishing what you think the future will look like?

I think I've read the following method from other people on Less Wrong, but I can't place a specific source or name. if anyone else can help me with attribution or a link to more details, I would appreciate it.

Generate a list of each possibility whose consequences seem worth tracking(I.E, they would affect whether or not you felt future changes would be superficial) and then also track what you think are the probabilities of each step whose consequences seem worth tracking.

Example: Let's say you think there is a 20% chance that technological growth will continue exponentially into a singularity and a 80% chance it will proceed at a slower pace. You can then say "Well, If technology proceeds at a slower pace, then I think that there is an 80% chance that enough jobs will be automated to substantially reshape society, and a 20% chance that the portion of jobs automated will be superficial. And If technology does proceed into a singularity, I think that there will be a 20% chance of it being a Friendly Singularity, and an 80% chance of it being an Unfriendly singularity.

That means the future you would expect to see would be technology proceeds at a slower pace, but there are enough jobs will be automated to substantially reshape society (64%) Unfriendly Singularity or superficial automation are about equally likely (16% each) but less to be expected, and then a friendly Singularity is the least likely but not impossible. (4%)

So you establish a rough pass of a net like that with a number of different nodes (as opposed to just 3 and only 2 deep).

Then there would then be three ways you might be wrong, and you want to try to update accordingly:

You're convinced an existing node won't matter. (Example: You read a paper that persuades you that whether or not people will have middle class jobs won't matter in the long run) so you remove that node.

You're convinced a new node will matter, that you hadn't accounted for. (Example: You read a paper that persuades you that whether or not people robots and algorithms will be allowed to autonomously make kill decisions will matter in the long run)

You find out about something that updates your probability of one of your existing nodes. (MIRI publishes a paper which causes you to update the likelihood of a friendly singularity to a different percentage.)

This helps you separate out impact and likelihood, and also keeps in mind that certainty things have prerequisites, all of which is important for forecasting.

Thank you to whoever explained this initially and I apologize I can't remember the concept name. Hopefully I did not express anything incorrectly.

(Note: the specific numbers above are mostly arbitrary and I mainly selected them for easy multiplication.)

5

New vs. Business-as-Usual Future

5

5

5

New vs. Business-as-Usual Future

5

5