Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!snorkelwacker!husc6!popvax!weber From: weber@popvax.harvard.edu (R09400@RPWeber) Newsgroups: comp.society.futures Subject: Re: Technology Forecasting Summary: probability doesn't help Keywords: probability, forecasting, trend Message-ID: <1936@husc6.harvard.edu> Date: 24 Feb 90 13:00:53 GMT References: <1930@husc6.harvard.edu> <9002240412.AA14891@world.std.com> Sender: news@husc6.harvard.edu Reply-To: weber@popvax.harvard.edu (Bob Weber) Organization: Office for Information Technology, Harvard University Lines: 31 In article <9002240412.AA14891@world.std.com> bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes: >The first question which comes to my mind is, is this an either/or >situation? Don't the trend lines at least provide an envelope of >possibility to place events in, a probability space basically. > >Something lying outside of the extrapolation boundary implies a >"catastrophic precursor", such as a new chip technology allowing a >sudden 100x speed-up, so we go back and look for that. > The problem with probability space is that if you grant the premise that the future occurs because of some event sequence (rather than because of some sent of trends (even thought the former reflect the more likely than any other future. For example, if you have 40 events in a sequence leading to some outcome, and each event is highly probable, say .9 likely, then the probability of this particular future is .9 to the 40th power, or .017. This tells us that the world is highly contingent. One goal should be to give up the notion of one particular likely outcome and think in terms of alternative event sequences and alternative outcomes. Regards Bob ------------------------------------------------------------------ Bob Weber | Voice (617) 495-3744 Sr. Technology Consultant | Fax (617) 495-0750 Harvard University/OIT | Bitnet: weber@harvarda 50 Church St., 4th Floor | Internet: weber@popvax.harvard.edu Cambridge, MA 02138 ------------------------------------------------------------------