©Ibling

Introduction:

(Next slide) Humans are quite unique compared to other animals because we have been gifted
with a very potent brain. One of the unique things that our brain can do is to consciously
predict the future (First text). We can consciously think of our next generation; we can
consciously think whether your teacher will yell at you when you come late; and we can also
consciously predict the weather (Next text). Our real-life situation is the weather forecast, and
this forecast (Next text) that we see every day in front of our TV is essentially predicting an
event that has not happened yet. (Next slide) Here is a forecast by BBC that was made 2
weeks ago. Since this future event is a form of knowledge, there must be some ways of
knowing involved in order to reach that knowledge.

(Next slide) From this we have extracted the knowledge question (Next text) “to what extent
do different ways of knowing help us to predict the future?” The ways of knowing we are
going to evaluate are (Next text) inductive reasoning, memory and sense perception.

Of course, two terms need to be defined. (Next text) We defined prediction as an act of
envisioning the most likely future by some means, and “some means” in this case would be
ways of knowing. (Next text) Then we defined future event as an event that lies further in
the timescale and has not yet been observed by knowers at the current time.

Body 1 reasoning:

(Next slide) Inductive reasoning is a way of knowing we use very often to consciously predict
the future. (Next text) It uses a series of premises to produce a speculative conclusion. This
conclusion may be false even though premises are absolutely true. The reason why inductive
reasoning is used instead of deductive reasoning is because (Next text) deductive reasoning
can only expand implications and work within known knowledge while (Next text) inductive
reasoning can expand known knowledge by thinking of a new conclusion.

(Next slide) Inductive reasoning is often helpful of predicting future in social sciences. An
example is the (Next text) model of demand in economics. What happens here is that
economists analyse a (Next text) sample of people's behaviour in a certain situation. They
then seek for a general trend in their behaviour and predict that the (Next text) the next person
in the market will lose interest in demand as the price increases. Thus inductive reasoning
enables this transition from current/past knowledge to a future knowledge.

(Next slide) Inductive reasoning is also an integral part of the scientific method. (Next text) A
hypothesis is a form of inductive reasoning that predicts a future event because it uses existing
premises to generate a speculative conclusion of what will happen. (Next text) One of the
most successful predictions throughout history is Mendeleyev’s prediction of elements in
1869. When he arranged the known elements by mass he noticed some abnormally large gaps
between the elements and therefore predicted that more elements will be found. (Next text)
Indeed he was right and what we have today is the periodic table. (Next slide) It is important
to note that inductive reasoning is still helpful (Next text) regardless of whether the prediction
is right or wrong. In fact, having a wrong prediction or disproving someone else’s prediction
 ©Ibling

is known as falsification. Thomas Edison said during his experiment with lightbulbs (Next
text) “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work”. Thus inductive
reasoning enables this systematic approach that may eventually lead to a correct prediction.
On the other hand, one could argue that a hypothesis is not really a prediction of the future,
but rather (Next text) a prediction of an unknown knowledge that exists at the present. And a
strong argument for that is that hypotheses in science are testable anytime, while a prediction
of a future event that lies further in the timescale is not testable until we reach that time. In all,
it is a matter of how an individual decides to define “future event”. But inductive prediction is
definitely helpful within the scientific context.

(Next slide) Nevertheless, inductive reasoning can be very misleading. (Next text) During the
1980s, people prepared for an ice age because they thought global warming would change the
climate cycle drastically. Scientists graphed data and extrapolated them to predict the future.
(Next text) This is a graph with three predictions that were made during 20th century together
with the actual numbers for global warming up to 2011. We have years on x-axis and
temperature change in y-axis. The real figures are closest to (Next text) Hansen’s Scenario C,
but this scenario is only when all CO2 emissions have stopped completely, which never
happened. So inductive reasoning overestimated the increase and gave the world a false
warning.

(Next slide) From these examples we learn many flaws of inductive reasoning for predicting
future. The first limitation is that it tends to generalize. Looking back on the economics
example, inductive reasoning generalized the whole mankind by a sample of data. And
generalizations are always susceptible to exceptions and inaccuracies, hence a false prediction.
(Next text) Second limitation is that inductive reasoning assumes that future is going to be
like past, also known as uniformity of nature. This assumption is vital because otherwise, all
the evidence we have gathered would be meaningless if the future is completely independent
of it. For this graph of global warming, we assume that nature will behave in the same way
throughout time as well as humans. This would not be a problem if this uniformity of nature
was true but the problem is that (Next text) a theory called Heisenberg's uncertainty principle
also known as the basis of quantum mechanics speaks strongly against uniformity of nature. I
seems that we cannot even predict the movement of electrons at the very atomic level.
Quantum mechanics supported this by saying “future affects the past”. It sounds absurd but
basically, nature itself does not know what will happen in the future before we actually
observe it. Thus inductive reasoning might be assuming something that is false.

Inductive reasoning has got limitations but the big take-home from inductive reasoning is that
it has an ability to systematically use the evidence to find a trend and see where it is probable
to land in the future. The conclusion might be correct, might be false, might be cyclical or
might point to a new result, but it definitely attempts to give us a reasonable conclusion.
 ©Ibling

Body 2 memory:

Personal memory

Memory is another way of knowing which can be considered when predicting the future.
Memory can be divided into the personal and the collective memory. I will begin with
personal memory.

At first sight, it might seem like memory is used for the past rather than for the future.
Memory itself is simply a storage of how we perceived past information, but as soon as we
remember something, it is an act of recalling the past information into our present lives. In
fact, the human brain uses the same virtual mental processes both when recalling the past
and envisioning the future. This is also known as the “default network”. The result of this
new research shows that the act of remembering is the tool used when we envision the future.
This connection can be shown by the example of people who have mental structures which
limit their ability of remembering past events, even though some of them still have the
capacity to reason and basic sense perception. These people are at the same time experiencing
low capacity of envisioning and predicting the future. According to this, memory is an
essential part in predicting the future; it could even be said that we are not only envisioning
the future but remembering it.

Memory is not only the tool but the base used to envision the future; sometimes accurately
but also inaccurately. This was the case when I was preparing for this presentation.
Preparation for future events in itself is a form of prediction, as it requires me to envision the
future. In order to predict how this presentation would feel like, I recalled memories of
previous presentations. However, here is also one limitation of memory as a way of predicting
the future, as it only can recognize patterns which repeat themselves. The future predictions
are entirely based on how we remember events already occurred. Hence, memory alone could
not tell me that I can improve and feel more comfortable with more experience. Moreover, the
fact that I was nervous in previous presentations is creating another bias, as emotional events
are more likely to be remembered than the parts of my presentations which were not as
uncomfortable. This loss of a greater picture might lead to inaccurate predictions, thus,
memory is not always a reliable source.

At same time also you might have made predictions about our presentation. You might
wonder what this clown is doing in the beginning of our presentation. Memories of clowns
usually are connected to emotions: either with happiness or fear. And you might wonder what
this picture has to do with our presentation, which directly will create predictions about the
next following future. But depending on your emotional memory the prediction will vary
among you. This is a further example of memory predictions.

Collective memory

As I have shown, personal memory usually predicts the personal future, instead of world
events. However, there is something called “collective memory”.
 ©Ibling

There are different perceptions of the collective memory. The official and most common one
is that collective memory is the shared knowledge of a group of people about the past, usually
passed on from generation to generation. In other words, what we call “history”. The idea of
viewing time as being circular would indicate events to reoccur on a regular basis. Thus, the
idea of memory predictions would be valid. And even though we have accepted the idea of
time being an arrow which only moves in one way, we still face the question if history is
repeating itself. In fact, it is possible to draw parallels between various trends in history.

As an example, there are controversial ideas of whether there will be a Third World War and
how it would occur. There are those who recognize past events in the pre-First World War
and pre-Second World War era and draw parallels between those and the situation of today.
This would include alliances, arms race, increasing national tensions, annexations of
territories, indirect wars of world powers, and so on. In this case collective memory of past
historical events is used to predict a new world war.

At the same time, future predictions are depended on how large the data base from history is.
Also, the memory predictions of a Third World War do have limitations; as the collective
memory can limiting our visions of the future, since it – just as it is the case with personal
memory – only can recognize similarities in patterns which are repeating themselves. The
comparison to the First and Second World Wars with our close future can therefore create
blindness of the reality we are facing. It can be argued that the situation of today is a new
phenomenon, where war is no longer national. Memory has an inability of recognizing and
imagining new forms of the past, hence memory alone is not a sufficient way of knowing
about the future.

Both the act of prediction itself and the information base collected, are in need of memory as
a way of knowing about the future. Now we could even say that we remember the future. This
would be true, at least sometimes. And whether the prediction will come true or not is another
matter, which may only be answered or even understood when the future becomes history.

Body 3 sense perception:

Other than being the primary way of collecting knowledge to be processed, sense perception
is a way of knowing that helps predict the future mainly in a short time span. Since sense
perception gives us knowledge of our surroundings it can often make us instinctively interact
with the environment in accordance to our prediction of the future. If we consider athletics as
an example, when we play football we use our sense for the movement and placement of our
body parts in order to shoot, pass or receive the ball effectively. Combined with the
remaining senses of the human body, our proprioception this is what informs us of the
positions and motions of our legs and arms, enables us to perform everyday tasks by giving us
a sense of the near future by processing information of our surroundings.

However there are several situations where our senses misinform us and gives us faulty
knowledge of our surroundings and thereby an inaccurate prediction of the future. When
going to driving school I was thought several potential illusions in traffic. For instance if I’m
driving at night and I see an approaching car with one broken headlight, my brain sometimes
 ©Ibling

just assume that the vehicle is a motorcycle. This might give us the false sense of having a
wider road to use and might cause me to collide with the car if I’m evading a pedestrian
walking on your side of the road as the car is about to pass me. Since we’re aware of both
possibilities our brain sometimes just guesses on the unknown and so gives us a false sense of
reality thereby inaccurately predicts the future. So our senses aren’t completely reliable even
in a short time span which is likely to lead to falsified future predictions.

One could also argue that our senses can predict the future in a longer time span, where upon
predicting the future our main way of knowing could be sense perception. The ability to
predict the future often called precognition, clairvoyance or the sixth sense is an alleged sense
that is used in some way to gain knowledge of the future. An example is Edgar Cayce, an
American psychic who answered various questions from people including questions about the
future while he himself was in a trance state. His clients included famous people such as the
former president of USA Woodrow Wilson and the inventor Thomas Edison, although a vast
amount of his clients where mainly counselled on common day personal matters. Yet he still
gave advice on future course of actions based on his alleged knowledge from his trance state.
Apparently he had numerous supporters that believed in his alleged powers.

All though there are obvious limitations for how well extrasensory perception predicts the
future. The whole concept of precognition is somewhat based on the burden of proof
fallacy\argument where it’s up to the doubters to disprove it. It has no proof of existence other
than the knower’s claim of its existence compared to other senses where there are not only
more frequent and accurate occurrences but proof of receptors and their links to the brain; the
eyes, ears, nose etc. Cayce himself had numerous criticizers where the main arguments
against him was that proof of his abilities mainly exists as unreliable news sources and not
well documented at all and that his guidance consisted of relatively broad advice and mainly
based on the studies of other authors.

The greatest limitation of sense perception as a whole is that it’s one of the most subjective
ways of knowing. One is somewhat unaware of exactly what another person hears or sees. Of
course, other ways of knowing differ from person to person; someone may have a different
view of a shared memory, yet their opinions are often possible to sway to some extent while
for instance if I think it’s somewhat warm outside I might advise someone else not to bother
putting on a jacket despite if the person will freeze and would want a jacket. This creates
difficulties in envisioning the same reality as someone else. So predicting a future in this
relative reality might be inaccurate from person to person. This has a distorting effect of our
predictions of the future as we’re unsure of to what extent we perceive reality similarly.

In short sense perception is not only successful in predicting the future in the short run but
also vital, due to its subjective nature it is unclear to how each individual uses it to predict the
future thereby using it to predict the future in the long run is unlikely and rather skeptical.

Conclusion:

(Next slide) We have up until now explained as if these ways of knowing operate separately
to predict the future. However in reality, (Next text) it is not as clear-cut. If we look at most of
 ©Ibling

the predictions and even the trivial predictions we make every day, we can see that all ways of
knowing are in fact connected (Next text). For instance, when we predict what final grade we
will get in IB, we would (Next text) first use our sense perception to hear teacher’s comments
and see the grades we get in tests. Then we store that in our memory and then we use the
memory to use inductive reasoning to predict where our grade might land in the future.
Therefore avoiding a way of knowing when predicting a future event seems rather inevitable.

(Next slide) Since we now know that these three ways of knowing are connected, a subsidiary
knowledge question arises. (Next text) How can any way of knowing be more helpful in
predicting future knowledge than the other? In order to understand this problem, one has to
understand how ways of knowing plays the role in predicting the future. This was partly
hinted when explaining the example with IB grades, but to visualize, (Next text) there is a
knowledge bank that first need to be accumulated by some ways of knowing. (Next text)
Subsequently, that knowledge bank needs to be used to predict the future by another or the
same ways of knowing.

(Next slide) For the ways of knowing needed to gather knowledge for predicting the future, it
is a matter of reliability. Thus for gathering knowledge, (Next text) sense perception and
memory would be comparatively more reliable than inductive reasoning because gathering
knowledge with inductive reasoning would accumulate a thin ground of uncertain knowledge.
We know that the conclusion reached by inductive reasoning is never 100% certain.
Conversely, (Next text) for transcending from the current/past knowledge to future knowledge,
inductive reasoning is more suitable because it has an ability as mentioned in the introduction
to expand knowledge. Thus it is difficult to pinpoint which ways of knowing are more helpful
since all of them are involved somehow, and it is also difficult because all ways of knowing
have their own flaws.

(Next slide) In conclusion, different ways of knowing does seem to help us to predict the
future to some extent. The ways of knowing cannot pinpoint the future with absolute certainty
but they can still give us a sense of direction which is very valuable as well. By knowing the
tendency of the future we can attempt to prepare or prevent. If we refer back to the weather
forecast (Next text), three ways of knowing we have mentioned were all involved to give us a
rather realistic and reliable prediction. And by knowing that it will for instance rain, we are
the able to prepare and prevent us getting wet. Another very exemplary real-life situation
where ways of knowing have helped us predict the future is the prediction of (Next text)
housing bubble crash in 2007 by Nourel Roubini. Thus one could see that combining ways of
knowing can give us a rather specific prediction and not only a direction. But one has to also
remember that the certainty of the prediction very much depends on (Next text) how specific
and how far away in time the conclusion is. The more specific the conclusion is, the more
susceptible it is to counter events. The further away in time the conclusion is, the more
susceptible it is to other changing variables.

(Next slide) Thank you for listening and keep predicting!