Predictions

Being able to predict what’s coming up in the future allows you to make better decisions right now. Better decisions will give you more chances to actually change the current direction rather than just getting caught up in the flow.

The first part of enhancing predictions is to accept that there is only one objective reality. Although it surrounds all of us, we only ever see a tiny sliver of it. Because of that, it is not uncommon for people to believe that their sliver is somehow personalized just for them. It is not. We might sometimes perceive the world as somewhat random, but that’s only because we are caught by surprise.

The next part is to understand that all things follow a trajectory. They will continue on their merry way unless they are interrupted by something unusual. From our perspective, reality is an informal system; all sorts of surprising things can occur. It is constrained, but these constraints are beyond our ability to formalize them. Although this allows for a lot of wiggle room on what might actually happen, it’s still constrained. Some things just can’t happen; they violate some very deep underlying rules about how the physics of the universe will play out.

In that sense, there are plenty of things that are possible, but also highly unlikely. And there are plenty of things that are absolutely impossible, although we might not have full certainty that they are not just unlikely.

So if we observe any phenomena long enough, while we can’t discount that surprising things may occur, if they don’t, then it will follow the trajectory that it has been on already. That is, things will mostly continue as expected based on their past behaviour.

That can be a bit tricky though, if the past behaviour has a rather complicated path through a very long period of time. That’s a lot of complexity to absorb.

Thus, to get a reasonable prediction, you need to observe the actual path through a context that is large enough to include all of the non-surprising but significant influences. Pull back far enough to include all of the dominant variations and influences, watch the movement, and then sketch out the default path forward. If nothing unusual throws it off course, you know where it is headed.

If you are surprised, it could just be an extremely rare event, or that your context was just not large enough to be accurate. Most often, it was too narrow a context.

In that sense, being able to predict lots of things around you is an indication that your knowledge extends far beyond your own sliver. You can learn to predict larger phenomena or farther out in the future as you acquire a deeper understanding of reality. They are correlated.

In the general sense, getting better at predictions will make your actions go smoother. You can leave a little room for the informality, but mostly get the results that you desire. It also helps with insurance. You might not be able to precisely predict infrequent events, but at least you can plan for them in order to mitigate their disruptions. This is a better strategy than just being purely reactive, in that it prepares you to better navigate any obstacles while keeping you aligned to a longer-term goal. When you can anticipate your bad days, you can prepare enough in advance to make them easier to deal with.