I'd like to reflect upon the foundation of Professor Jackson's lecture this week - specifically his presentation of forecasting in contrast to predicting. Additionally, I'd like to tie it to an argument in support of diversity and inclusion.
While many humans are curious about the future, few try to precisely predict what will happen, even fewer accurately predict what will happen and even fewer still are prepared for all predictions rendered across the globe of what will happen. With such a poor success rate, why do we still even try to predict the future? Despite the power of an entire country supporting an intelligence analyst, there are bound to be elements of a situation that they do not know therefore lead to the potential for surprise.
The same argument against prediction can be made against conforming our culture to a single identity.
I was once told that diversity is our nation's greatest strength as well as our greatest downfall. For example, if five groups of five people each are all 99% identical and put in rooms together and told that the group who builds the best tower will will a prize, it is the diverse 1% in each of those individuals that emerges to think creatively, outside-the-box and ultimately interpreting the definition of best correctly. However, it is the identical 99% of each of those individuals that allows them to convince their teammates to build their idea and successfully construct it.
While predictions can only be useful if they are true, forecasting can be useful for any outcome. Therefore, our likelihood of acting well based on a prediction is so much lower than the likelihood of acting well based on a forecast. The latter leaves room for a full breadth of results.
If we can agree upon this logic for the scenario planning of international relations, why is it so difficult for countries to agree upon this logic for the breadth of identities that are bound to be represented in their culture?
Very interesting question Katherine, however I would submit to you that while we can academically agree that both scenario planning and respecting diverse identities, the implementation of this in societies and governments is often far harder.
ReplyDeleteKatherine,
ReplyDeleteyou ask some good questions in your post. I was asking myself the same thing, why do we still try to predict the future when we know that only a few predictions turn out to be accurate. Forecasting is so much more useful than predicting because forecasting focuses on the likelihood for something to happen or not. However, while it is so much more useful, I agree with Tim that implementation in societies and governments is a lot harder.
Tim & Christine, agreed! Implementation is frequently so much more difficult that creation. I think that is one of the core criticisms of economics for example. They can forecast and predict all day long with their theories but these same theories are rarely implemented with perfection.
ReplyDeleteI think one of the largest obstacles with such implementation is similar to the point I presented in my post -> diversity can lead to great ideas but that same diversity can make implementation difficult.