Telling the Future Today
Telling the Future Today
This chapter examines the main epistemic and political challenges we find today when we make claims about the future. From an epistemic perspective, this chapter asks whether the quality of future claims that are mostly linear (as in Humean epistemology) is more satisfying if future claims are the output of a collective debate or whether individual experts are more reliable. From a political perspective, this raises the question of the institutionalization of knowledge. As in oracles’ networks, indicators are today composed of other indexes that are embedded with our political and economic decisions. This chapter defines the future as a story that has to follow certain rules. When making historical counterfactual claims, we find multiple paths in different scenarios. There is no striking opposition between a closed past and an open future (David Lewis); both of them are enigmas to be unveiled, requiring specific tools.
Keywords: Future, Hume, Indicators, Predictive markets, Collective intelligence, Linear thinking, Expertise, David Lewis
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