What major milestones have been reached much earlier than predicted by futurists? Trying to compile a list.
Examples: AI conquering Go, China becoming largest auto market, 400ppm carbon...
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These seem like corner cases. Futurists are typically too aggressive with timelines, even when they get the predictions right.
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They are rarer, but not corner cases. I think there's a definite non-measure-zero set here defining a likely-to-be-faster-than-predicted phenomena.
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I don't know. AI had its winter. Mullaly knew China would be biggest market 10 years ago. Revelle saw CO2 trend in the 1960s.
Are we talking about most futurists? All futurists?
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Let's go with most futurists. There's always likely to be somebody who gets it right by chance, so that can be ignored unless they repeatedly bias early in predictions and win regularly.
Big subset is descriptions of alien parts of present masquerading as futurism (future-not-evenly-distributed) - e.g. imagination of future in Star Trek, post-WWII globalized naval / jet empires writ large on stars. Predictions mainstream in decades because already mostly existed.


