Black swan events are certainly plausible and we can’t ignore them. But by definition they’re unpredictable and you can’t assume any of them will occur. They are infinite in number. Astronaut Russell Schweickart has an institute to monitor possible asteroid strikes - devastating if they occur. The way to handle black swans is to build our general resilience and capability and watch out for the black swans we create. Easy to say…
Thanks for writing this Art. I actually read it through twice in a row to fully grasp it. Many of these predetermined scenarios I'm familiar with...but the framing—that these are already well on their way and provide a place for us to begin finding solutions—is good. And I'm saddened but not surprised that some of the comments here reflect the difficulty of "baked-in denial" in the human species. Perhaps my favorite (and most truthful) saying of all time is "People don't see the writing on the wall until their backs are up against it." So as you suggest, the greatest question of all is: will enough of us actually pay attention?
And to any other readers and commenters: this piece is obviously NOT doomsday preaching. If you think it is, you either didn't read beyond the first few paragraphs or missed the point. It's actually a very optimistic piece that shows us the best possible way forward—by being aware of the highest-priority issues and providing a framework within which we can start to find solutions.
Seems like the most obvious missing prediction thst is already baked in is the continued growth in income equality, especially given the emergence of the world's first trillionaire this month. Income inequality will continue to increase due to basic effects of increased returns to capital over labor. Asset values escalate, non billionaires are priced out of everything and 99% of the population ends up living in a Dickensian dystopia. Otherwise, thanks for the article.
I think there's a plausible future where income inequality is no longer as great. It would take a combination of factors, but it's happened before. Carlota Perez' cycles always involve a shift as the wealthiest sector realizes that broad prosperity is in its interest.
I can't disagree with the elements underpinning your predictions. However, I kept thinking of what is termed black swan events - being the inherently unpredictable. I have an unprovable notion that the globe will cure itself with one of the traditional plagues of war, famine, pestilence, disease. For example, I read some time ago that Lagos' population will climb to 100 million. Even Blantyre was said to become 50 million strong as was Kabul. Further, the elbow of Africa with Lagos at its centre is well on its way to be upwards of 600 million. How they will be fed is beyond my ken. What happens to the biological and inorganic waste will test the most efficient of systems. It seems to me that packing people in on that scale will inevitably act as a hothouse for disease. If not, then the struggle for resources could sell result in war and unleash the horrors of mass destruction.
I have a sense that the globe can support only about 2 billion people if that. When the mass migrations start which are inevitable then the chances of conflict are virtually certain. I am old and grateful for it. I don't want to see the potential I fear become actual.
More BS climate chaos disaster film on the way. The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno remakes! The world heard those predictions 30 years ago to happen 27 years ago. Shame on these disaster roulette promoters.
Very stimulating framework. But I wonder whether “predetermined” is carrying several different meanings here: physically locked-in consequences, robust demographic pressures, and plausible technological extrapolations.
The Ganges flood follows rain that has already fallen through a relatively stable physical channel. In digital technology, however, the channel itself may change while the water is moving. Total demand for computation may keep rising, but that does not mean routine AI inference will remain in hyperscale data centres.
A plausible domestic architecture is a privately owned AI hub in the home. It would hold the user’s models, documents, memories and agents, while phones, tablets, computers, cars and televisions access it as clients, including remotely through a VPN. Good-enough local models would handle ordinary tasks at almost zero marginal cost; only exceptional problems would be selectively escalated to frontier systems.
In that future, central data centres would still be needed for training, science and specialist tasks. But they would lose much of the routine inference demand—and, more importantly, the stream of private behavioural data—on which current investment expectations appear to depend.
The present generation of AI infrastructure might therefore become an excellent example of your own “installed base of human error”: billions invested in concrete and rapidly ageing hardware, encoding assumptions that could become obsolete long before the buildings themselves wear out.
I agree all this is a plausible future. I agree that there are many reasons something can be predetermined, which is why it's important to be precise about which elements are certain and which are not. Thanks for this, Steffen.
I didn't say they would. For the foreseeable future, human beings will use as much energy as is produced. It's not certain that humanity will ever reach a cap. However, it is predetermined that the cost of renewables will drop below the cost of fossil fuels.
Thanks for this. Great leaps in medical research are predetermined, but all the uncertainties remain about which leaps get funded and which turn out to have an effect.
I wonder whether you should add the rise of new pandemic diseases with permafrost releasing archaic bacteria and increased human - animals interactions (industrial and wild animals)
I'm working on an article now about the most interesting scenarios I've come across during the past few years. One of them was another global pandemic. It's not certain, but it could be dramatic.
As for the change in weather, I tried to address that in an article posted just now.
I fear the already clear change of climate around the world and forcasted as we are nowhere managing to stay well below + 2°C is underestimated in most of your levers. It will have an accelerating effect as industries, networks (water & electricity), transportation conditions, food production, etc. will be very much altered
In part because every time that type of shortage is treated as inevitable, there turn out to be other sources. This time could be different, but it's not predetermined.
Honestly, whenever I think about it, I flashback to that scene in the Brad Pitt movie "World War Z" where the zombies are machine-gunned as they crest the top of a huge concrete border wall.
I can't help but feel that there will be this massive irony in 20 or 30 years time when aging far-right Grandpa yells "See! See! I was right about immigration the whole time! They're coming to takeover!".
No, Grandpa... You were a racist cnut back then, and you're still a racist cnut now, and they are not coming to "takeover", they are coming to *survive* because North Africa is now uninhabitable due to extreme drought, crop failures, and unsurvivable wet bulb temperatures, all due to climate change.
But the ironic part, and the tragic part, is that Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey etc will probably "build the wall", and implement hard borders enforced by lethal force, because they will be struggling to feed and house their existing populations and will in no way be able to cope with millions or 10s of millions of climate refugees.
Ultimately, states have a recognised right to "territorial integrity", and the existing populations have a right of "self-determination", and as much I wish it won't come to this ultimately the nations on the front-line of the climate migration crisis will choose "us" over "them" and defend their borders "by any means necessary".
I'm less inclined to believe the "nation-state conflict" scenario as I think (a) a lot of the north African countries are more likely to self-destruct or fratricide before they'd launch an across the Med invasion in search of lebensraum and (b) I'd think they'd get their arses handed to them if they did (even if NATO doesn't fully function by then).
You know what fraud is don't you? In case you are too stupid, it is an act of deceit carried out to dispossess another of money or money's worth. I may be mistaken but I will not gain another's property by being so. In other words, you are an idiot. And I have used that word correctly. Have a nice life but I would advise a modicum of education.
Black swan events are certainly plausible and we can’t ignore them. But by definition they’re unpredictable and you can’t assume any of them will occur. They are infinite in number. Astronaut Russell Schweickart has an institute to monitor possible asteroid strikes - devastating if they occur. The way to handle black swans is to build our general resilience and capability and watch out for the black swans we create. Easy to say…
Thanks for writing this Art. I actually read it through twice in a row to fully grasp it. Many of these predetermined scenarios I'm familiar with...but the framing—that these are already well on their way and provide a place for us to begin finding solutions—is good. And I'm saddened but not surprised that some of the comments here reflect the difficulty of "baked-in denial" in the human species. Perhaps my favorite (and most truthful) saying of all time is "People don't see the writing on the wall until their backs are up against it." So as you suggest, the greatest question of all is: will enough of us actually pay attention?
And to any other readers and commenters: this piece is obviously NOT doomsday preaching. If you think it is, you either didn't read beyond the first few paragraphs or missed the point. It's actually a very optimistic piece that shows us the best possible way forward—by being aware of the highest-priority issues and providing a framework within which we can start to find solutions.
Seems like the most obvious missing prediction thst is already baked in is the continued growth in income equality, especially given the emergence of the world's first trillionaire this month. Income inequality will continue to increase due to basic effects of increased returns to capital over labor. Asset values escalate, non billionaires are priced out of everything and 99% of the population ends up living in a Dickensian dystopia. Otherwise, thanks for the article.
I think there's a plausible future where income inequality is no longer as great. It would take a combination of factors, but it's happened before. Carlota Perez' cycles always involve a shift as the wealthiest sector realizes that broad prosperity is in its interest.
I can't disagree with the elements underpinning your predictions. However, I kept thinking of what is termed black swan events - being the inherently unpredictable. I have an unprovable notion that the globe will cure itself with one of the traditional plagues of war, famine, pestilence, disease. For example, I read some time ago that Lagos' population will climb to 100 million. Even Blantyre was said to become 50 million strong as was Kabul. Further, the elbow of Africa with Lagos at its centre is well on its way to be upwards of 600 million. How they will be fed is beyond my ken. What happens to the biological and inorganic waste will test the most efficient of systems. It seems to me that packing people in on that scale will inevitably act as a hothouse for disease. If not, then the struggle for resources could sell result in war and unleash the horrors of mass destruction.
I have a sense that the globe can support only about 2 billion people if that. When the mass migrations start which are inevitable then the chances of conflict are virtually certain. I am old and grateful for it. I don't want to see the potential I fear become actual.
Climate change.. Caused by carbon... You should have left that to later in the article, I might have read more.
More BS climate chaos disaster film on the way. The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno remakes! The world heard those predictions 30 years ago to happen 27 years ago. Shame on these disaster roulette promoters.
I didn't say disaster. I said more extreme weather is baked in.
It's possible very few people will be directly affected in absolute numbers. But the percentage of people affected will go up.
This article, called "FEMA's Next Disaster," is on target:
https://davesulek.substack.com/p/863122dc-8cc2-4e9d-9b2f-f8c0fafb1672.
I couldn’t read past the thick succulent climate #fearporn
I just responded to this comment, and others, with a new article.
If you are depending on Sub-Saharan Africans to save us, you are delusional.
Not to save us. I just said that they will be younger, in aggregate, than the rest of the world in aggregate. There could be a variety of outcomes.
Very stimulating framework. But I wonder whether “predetermined” is carrying several different meanings here: physically locked-in consequences, robust demographic pressures, and plausible technological extrapolations.
The Ganges flood follows rain that has already fallen through a relatively stable physical channel. In digital technology, however, the channel itself may change while the water is moving. Total demand for computation may keep rising, but that does not mean routine AI inference will remain in hyperscale data centres.
A plausible domestic architecture is a privately owned AI hub in the home. It would hold the user’s models, documents, memories and agents, while phones, tablets, computers, cars and televisions access it as clients, including remotely through a VPN. Good-enough local models would handle ordinary tasks at almost zero marginal cost; only exceptional problems would be selectively escalated to frontier systems.
In that future, central data centres would still be needed for training, science and specialist tasks. But they would lose much of the routine inference demand—and, more importantly, the stream of private behavioural data—on which current investment expectations appear to depend.
The present generation of AI infrastructure might therefore become an excellent example of your own “installed base of human error”: billions invested in concrete and rapidly ageing hardware, encoding assumptions that could become obsolete long before the buildings themselves wear out.
I agree all this is a plausible future. I agree that there are many reasons something can be predetermined, which is why it's important to be precise about which elements are certain and which are not. Thanks for this, Steffen.
I hope this doesn’t sound too simple but, we need the Earth much more than the Earth needs us.
Sorry I missed this. I can't argue with it, but would prefer to not have us and the Earth in conflict.
You are wrong about renewables. They will never replace fossil fuels.
I didn't say they would. For the foreseeable future, human beings will use as much energy as is produced. It's not certain that humanity will ever reach a cap. However, it is predetermined that the cost of renewables will drop below the cost of fossil fuels.
planet warming and water becoming globally more scarce are mutually exclusive events
with significant warming almost all of the world will become more wet
Thanks. I should have said fresh water, drinkable water, located within reach of populations who need it. I will revise this.
even that is very questionable statement for which there is very little evidence
only models and even they do not agree about this
As a person recently diagnosed with stage 4 non small lung cancer, the innovation of treatments for this type of cancer has been leaps and bounds.
We need to reframe our conversation of living with cancer, who will be served, and how we will live.
The drug that saved me was approved by the fda in 2024, but a lot if this wouldn’t have been possible without big data crunching
Thanks for this. Great leaps in medical research are predetermined, but all the uncertainties remain about which leaps get funded and which turn out to have an effect.
I wonder whether you should add the rise of new pandemic diseases with permafrost releasing archaic bacteria and increased human - animals interactions (industrial and wild animals)
The change of weather is also minimised I believe
I'm working on an article now about the most interesting scenarios I've come across during the past few years. One of them was another global pandemic. It's not certain, but it could be dramatic.
As for the change in weather, I tried to address that in an article posted just now.
I fear the already clear change of climate around the world and forcasted as we are nowhere managing to stay well below + 2°C is underestimated in most of your levers. It will have an accelerating effect as industries, networks (water & electricity), transportation conditions, food production, etc. will be very much altered
I can't understand why the huge decline in economically available natural resources is not mentioned? Less oil, copper, steel etc etc etc. ?
In part because every time that type of shortage is treated as inevitable, there turn out to be other sources. This time could be different, but it's not predetermined.
I'd argue that the trade offs between available resources and the number of children + parental investment predates Becker.
Take a look at MacArthur and Wilson's ideas on r-selection and K-selection in The Theory of Island Biogeography (1967).
Someday I'd like to do (or see) a really good scenario-style project on the futures of human migration.
Honestly, whenever I think about it, I flashback to that scene in the Brad Pitt movie "World War Z" where the zombies are machine-gunned as they crest the top of a huge concrete border wall.
I can't help but feel that there will be this massive irony in 20 or 30 years time when aging far-right Grandpa yells "See! See! I was right about immigration the whole time! They're coming to takeover!".
No, Grandpa... You were a racist cnut back then, and you're still a racist cnut now, and they are not coming to "takeover", they are coming to *survive* because North Africa is now uninhabitable due to extreme drought, crop failures, and unsurvivable wet bulb temperatures, all due to climate change.
But the ironic part, and the tragic part, is that Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey etc will probably "build the wall", and implement hard borders enforced by lethal force, because they will be struggling to feed and house their existing populations and will in no way be able to cope with millions or 10s of millions of climate refugees.
Ultimately, states have a recognised right to "territorial integrity", and the existing populations have a right of "self-determination", and as much I wish it won't come to this ultimately the nations on the front-line of the climate migration crisis will choose "us" over "them" and defend their borders "by any means necessary".
I'm less inclined to believe the "nation-state conflict" scenario as I think (a) a lot of the north African countries are more likely to self-destruct or fratricide before they'd launch an across the Med invasion in search of lebensraum and (b) I'd think they'd get their arses handed to them if they did (even if NATO doesn't fully function by then).
Yeah. All depressing as f*ck... Sorry.
I need a gin&tonic now...
Lmao you’re a fucking fraud.
You know what fraud is don't you? In case you are too stupid, it is an act of deceit carried out to dispossess another of money or money's worth. I may be mistaken but I will not gain another's property by being so. In other words, you are an idiot. And I have used that word correctly. Have a nice life but I would advise a modicum of education.