Poll: Compared to 2012 do you think there are more or fewer futures open to the world right now in 2022?
Over say a 100-year horizon out to 2111/2122 respectively.
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Fewer. All possible futures that were available to us ten years ago are available now, and all of the paths not taken in the last 10 years are closed now. Unless you are ignoring time's arrow, fewer or far fewer are the only possible answers.
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You’re assuming a fixed set of futures in initial conditions. What about new paths that have opened up?
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I think the adjacent possibilities and the room they all have to run are much more dramatic and unpredictable, but the *sense* of ‘anything can happen’ feels deflated somewhat
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We escaped this
It’s all good
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Obviously more, but uncertainty of ending on a good one has gone up by a significant amount. If you had N futures w/ X% chance of hitting a good one in 2012, then in 2022, we have M>N futures with Y<X% net good outcomes.
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Subjectively, the events of the last decade have exposed a much broader array of possible futures (mostly bad). Objectively, I suspect the bad ones had their tracks laid by then, and what’s actually happened is that we’ve passed a bunch of off-ramps. (I picked fewer.)
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I'm not sure I understand the question?
An ~infinite number of possible futures are no longer available to us that were 10 years ago.
Every future still available to us now was available then, through the exact path we've taken.








