up:: [[Futures Thinking]] tags:: #on/future #on/innovation # Future Simulation ## Actually anything can change Think about what cannot be different in 10 or 20 years timeframe, it can be a cultural practice, a technological limitation, or a human behaviour. Feel free to list anything that you are nearly 100% certain, e.g., people would still measure their age in years and celebrate birthdays; on a clear weather day, the sky will be blue. *While working as a futurist, the most reliable way to get **blindsided and shocked** by change is to have something that you are 100% certain **cannot** change.* Thus, it is important to unstick your mind by brainstorming things you currently believe cannot possibly change, and then brainstorm ways that they can. >[!example] > Statement: It takes one man and one woman to make one baby. > Signals: Three-parent babies using genetic techniques to avoid genetic diseases; progress towards enabling genetic offspring for same-sex parents, and even purely artificial lab grown embryos with egg, sperm, nor womb involved. The goal of this unsticking excise is to develop psychological flexibility. ## Techniques to Unstick Your Mind *Three great techniques for unsticking your mind are **predicting the past**, **remembering the future**, and **hard empathy**.* ### Predicting the Past Think about a real choice that was made in the past, and imagine a different choice was made instead, and derive the different consequence that different choice might have made. E.g., if you had packed a bag and travelled somewhere this morning. ***Predicting the past** is useful for drawing the parallel that since the **present** could have been vastly different due to the **past**, so can the **future** be vastly different by actions taken in the **present**.* On a side note, this technique is often used in treatment of depression to address the belief that nothing you do matters. ### Remembering the Future Imagine yourself doing something you have never done before, and hopefully never even considered doing. The XYZ method may help with coming up with the scenario. > [!note] > X is something you love to do. Y is a living person you care about who has a personal connection with you, i.e. not celebrities unless you know them. Z is a faviourite, far-away place, somewhere out of your everyday routine. The scenario would then be: what if a year from now, you did X with Y in Z? Approach the scenario as if it's a memory, even better if you were able to vividly visualize and justify how that scenario came to be. ***Remembering the future** is useful because every time you build a memory or imagine a scenario, your brain has an easier time to **reimagine** it again (i.e., think "I just can't picture it.").* Scenarios that are easier to imagine are processed as more likely to happen. ### Hard Empathy Look for a news source describing a situation that is very far-removed from your current reality, then imagine if you were the main character in that situation. Note that this is not about imagining yourself in someone else's shoes, instead, bring the situation to your current reality. I.e., if some different norm was instantly established in your ecosystem. There are two types of empathy. Emotional empathy, where you can directly relate to someone else's experience, and there is no leap of imagination required. ***Cognitive empathy** (aka., hard empathy), on the order hand, require **intuition** and **rational thinking** to experience due to the lack of direct experience.* #### Your Future Self as a Stranger Take yourself ten years in the future, what are three ways in which that future version of you will be different than you are today? Think physical difference, think home life difference, think about one way you might be better. *For **99.9999%** of human being, this thinking process of yourself ten years in the future derives the same brain activation (in the medial pre-frontal cortex) as seeing a **stranger**.* Which means that your brain has effectively no empathy for your future self. This drop-off in relating to your future self happens one to three years for most of the population.