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HOR-16 · Tech Horizons · Fully written

Learn Futures & Foresight with any AI

Thinking about what's next

Futures studies is the disciplined practice of thinking rigorously about what might come next — not predicting the future, but mapping the range of possibilities and preparing for them. It's the encyclopedia's capstone: a way of thinking that runs across every other node.

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HOR-16 · Futures & Foresight
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§02

A map of Futures & Foresight

Thinking rigorously about what's next

The tools for taking the long view.

  • Scenario planning — building several plausible futures rather than betting on one.
  • Horizon scanning — spotting the weak signals of change early.
  • Existential & catastrophic risk — the study of what could go very wrong for everyone.
  • Long-term institutional design — building systems that can think past the next election or quarter.
§03

The canon

The founders of foresight

Real figures and works.

  • Herman Kahn — pioneered scenario planning at RAND, thinking the unthinkable.
  • The Club of Rome — The Limits to Growth (1972), a landmark (and much-debated) long-range model.
  • Philip Tetlock — showed, with hard evidence, that most expert prediction is poor — and that "superforecasting" can be learned.
  • The field of existential-risk studies — the serious analysis of threats to humanity's future.
  • Longtermism — the influential, and contested, idea that the far future should weigh heavily now.
§04

The live debates

The debates about the future

Real, and unusually consequential.

  • Can the future be forecast at all? Tetlock's evidence on how badly experts do is sobering.
  • Is longtermism profound or misguided? A live, serious argument about how much the far future should count.
  • Which risks matter most? AI, biotechnology, climate, nuclear — how to prioritise.
  • Optimism vs pessimism. Whether progress is robust, or fragile.
  • Designing for the long term. How institutions can escape short-term thinking.
§05

Where to start

A route in

A route in — and this node ties the others together.

  1. Run Orientation on scenario planning, or on existential risk.
  2. Use Great Debates on longtermism.
  3. Use the Connections prompt to link the futures of every other subject you've studied.
  4. Read Tetlock on forecasting — it will make you appropriately humble.

The lesson is humility with rigour: you can't predict the future, but you can prepare for many of them.