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 Review Notes on the  Future & Sociological Theory 
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 Moodle: Portal:  http://moodle.uvawise.edu/ 
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  Syllabus 
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Outine on SC  31:   Future & Sociological Theory 
  
  In his last speech MLK said 'I have been to the mtn & I have seen the other side.'  So MLK knew what a better society looked like.  Today, we have two obligations.  One is to work toward that vision of society, but  before we can do that, we must learn what that vision of society is.   Mellissa Harris Perry   
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 Forecasting  
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          Optimism Bias   
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          Pessimism Bias / Negativity Bias  
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          Normalcy Bias   
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          Black Swan Events   
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 Future Scenarios   
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          The Conventional World Scenarios   
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                   Reference Scenarios   
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                   The Balanced Growth Scenarios   
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          Barbarism Scenarios   
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                   Social Breakdown Scenarios   
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                   Fortress World Scenarios   
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                   Dark Ages Ahead   
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          Great Transitions Scenarios   
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                   Global Governance Scenarios   
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                   New Sustainability Scenarios   
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          Middling Scenarios   
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 Globalization & the Future   
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 A Sense of the Future.  Bronowski.  1978.  
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 Social Thought for the New Millennium.  Cuzzort & King.  2002.   
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 The Next Hundred Years.  Van Doren.  1991.   
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 Chaos Theory   
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 Future Shock.     Alvin Toffler.  1970  
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 The Better Angels of our Nature.    Steven Pinker.  2011.   

 
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 Outline on  Forecasting
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 FORECASTING USES HISTORICAL DATA TO PREDICT THE DIRECTION OF FUTURE TRENDS OF ONE OR SEVERAL VARIABLES, OR OF ENTIRE SCENARIOS 
 
  Perhaps the most common usage of forecasting is by firms to determine how to allocate their budgets for an upcoming period of time   
 
 Local, state, fed, & other levels of govt use forecasting in a number of areas such as:  crime rates, econ development, population levels, usage of govt services, & much more to help in setting public policy in these areas 
 
  For firms, forecasting is typically based on demand for the goods & services it offers, compared to the cost of producing them   
  Investors utilize forecasting to determine if events affecting a firm, such as sales expectations, will increase or decrease the price of shares in that firm  
  Forecasting also provides an important benchmark for firms which have a long term perspective of operations   
  A prediction is a similar, but more general term for forecasting   
 
 Forecasting is the process of making statements about events which have not yet been observed 
 
  Examples of forecasting include:  the estimation of a variable of interest at some specified future date such as population, the occurrence of an event such as a regime change, the development of a new technology such as self driving cars, the estb of a new social relationship such as gay marriage, & much more   
  Forecasting & prediction might refer to formal statistical methods employing:  demographic, time series, cross sectional, or longitudinal data, or alternatively to less formal judgmental methods   
  Usage of the concepts of forecasting & prediction can differ btwn areas of application:  for example, in hydrology, the terms forecasting is sometimes reserved for the est of values at certain specific future times, while the term prediction is used for more general est, such as the number of times floods will occur over a long period   
  Probability, risk, inaccurate or scant data & uncertainty are central to forecasting & prediction   
  It is generally considered good practice to indicate the degree of uncertainty attaching to forecasts, though measurements of uncertainty are also problematic   
  When the CIA forecasted that a US military would find WMD in Iraq, they told Pres Bush Jr, it would be 'a slam dunk,' but it turned out there were not WMD   
  A primary concern for forecasting is whether the data is accurate & up to date   
  FORECASTING UTILIZES BOTH QUANTITATIVE & QUALITATIVE METHODS & DATA  
  Most forecasting by social scientists, firms, & govts utilize quant data & methods   
  Qualitative forecasting techniques are subjective, based on the opinion & judgment of consumers & experts; they are appropriate when hist data is not available   
  Qualitative forecasting is usually applied to intermediate or long range decisions   
  Examples of qualitative forecasting methods include:  informed opinion & judgment, the Delphi method, mkt research, hist life cycle analogy, & more   
  Quantitative forecasting models are used to forecast future data as a function of past data; they are appropriate when hist data is available   
  Quantitative forecasting methods are usually applied to short or intermediate range decisions, but may also be applied to long range forecasting   
  Examples of quantitative forecasting methods include:  election outcomes, suicide rates, birth rates,  last period demand, simple & weighted N Period moving averages, simple exponential smoothing, multiplicative seasonal indexes, & more   
  NAIVE FORECASTING IS THE SIMPLE PREDICTION OF THE FUTURE BASED ON PAST TRENDS, W/O MODIFICATION BASED ON OTHER FACTORS OR THEORY   
  Naïve forecasts are the most cost effective forecasting model, &  provide a benchmark against which more sophisticated models can be compared   
  For stationary time series data, the naive approach says that the forecast for any period equals the hist average   
  For time series data that are stationary in terms of first differences, the naïve forecast equals the previous period's actual value   
  TIME SERIES FORECASTING PROJECTS HIST DATA INTO THE FUTURE, ALLOWING FOR VARIATIONS BASED ON OTHER FACTORS OR THEORY   
  Time series methods use historical data as the basis of estimates of future outcomes   
  Time series methods include methodologies such as: 
moving average 
weighted moving average 
Kalman filtering 
exponential smoothing 
auto regressive moving average (ARMA) 
auto regressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) 
extrapolation
linear prediction 
trend estimation 
growth curves 
statistical surveys 
& more 		  
  CAUSAL FORECASTING METHODS IDENTIFY UNDERLYING FACTORS THAT MIGHT INFLUENCE THE VARIABLE THAT IS BEING FORECASTED   
  Causal forecasting methods try to identify the underlying factors that might influence the variable that is being forecast  
  For example, info about climate patterns might improve the ability of a model to predict umbrella sales   
  Forecasting models often take acct of regular seasonal variations   
  In addition to climate, such variations can also be due to holidays & customs; one might predict that sales of college football apparel will be higher during the football season than during the off season   
  Several informal methods used in causal forecasting do not employ strict algorithms, but instead use the judgment of the forecaster   
  Some forecasts take acct of past relationships btwn variables: if one variable has, for example, been approximately linearly related to another for a long period of time, it may be appropriate to extrapolate such a relationship into the future, w/o necessarily understanding the reasons for the relationship   
  One type of causal analysis, regression analysis, includes a large grp of methods for predicting future values of a variable using info about other variables   
  The social sciences uses regression analysis & a number of other statistical methods to make predictions on everything from development of androgyny as a lifestyle to zoophilia   
  Statistical methods include both parametric (linear or non linear) and non parametric techniques   
  JUDGMENTAL FORECASTING INCORPORATES INTUITIVE JUDGMENTS, OPINIONS, OBSERVATIONS, SUBJECTIVE DATA, & SUBJECTIVE PROBABILITY ESTIMATES   
  Judgmental forecasting methods include: 
composite forecasts
Cooke's method
Delphi method
forecast by analogy
scenario building		  
  Judgmental forecasting is often done by experts in the field being forecasted   
  Experts can often make a forecast for 1 to 5 yrs w/o in depth analysis   
  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FORECASTING USES AI ALGORITHMS SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO FORECAST ONE OR MORE VARIABLES   
  AI methods include: 
artificial neural networks
grp method of data handling
support vector machines 
crowd sourcing		  
  Often AI forecasting methods are carried out by specialized programs loosely labeled: data mining, machine learning, pattern recognition, & big data   
  THE MORE SOPHISTICATED FORECASTERS OFTEN INCLUDE REFLEXIVE THEORY; THE IDEA THAT AS CONDITIONS CHANGE IN THE FUTURE, HUMANS WILL NOT MERELY EXPERIENCE CHANGE, THEY WILL ACT TO MAKE CHANGE, & REACT TO CHANGE   
  Many socioeconomic forecasters often try to include a humanist, ie reflexive, factor   
  Ritzer & Habermas have developed reflexive theories   
  See Also:  Ritzer   
  See Also:  Habermas   
  Those embracing reflexive theory claim that humans, through deliberate action, can have a profound influence on the future   
  Those embracing reflexive theory argue that it should be regarded a real possibility w/in our current socio econ sys that its future may be influenced by, to a varying degree, individuals & small grps of individuals   
  Recent popular publications like Capital in the Twenty First Century are regarded as major contributors to the increasingly apparent possibility of such reality where humans see a problem, ie rising inequality, & react to change it   
  It is argued that the influence which private & public investments have on our future can never be completely disconnected from the individual Machiavellian human character, but perhaps it can be harnessed for the benefit of humanity through democratic oversight   
  The methods that disregard the reflexive factor can never accurately predict our socio econ future   
  The Forecasting Flow Chart depicts a series of observations, analyses, simulations, & decisions which may be made to construct a forecast using either quantitative (statistical) or qualitative (judgmental) methods   

 
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A Forecasting Flow Chart
The Forecasting Flow Chart depicts a series of observations, analyses, simulations, & decisions which may be made to construct a forecast using either quantitative (statistical) or qualitative (judgmental) methods 

 
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 Outline on  Optimism Bias
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  OPTIMISM BIAS OCCURS WHEN A PERSON ESTIMATES THEY ARE MORE LIKELY TO EXPERIENCE A POSITIVE EVENT, OR LESS LIKELY TO EXPERIENCE A NEGATIVE EVENT, COMPARED TO THE ACTUAL LIKELIHOOD OF THE EVENT 
 
  Optimism bias, also known as unrealistic or comparative optimism, is a bias where a person to believes that, compared to others, there is less risk of experiencing a negative event   
  There are factors that increase the likelihood a person to be optimistically biased including:  their desired end state, their cognitive mechanisms, the info they have about themselves vs others, & overall mood   
  The optimistic bias is seen in a number of situations, including:  people believing that they are less at risk of being a crime victim than others, smokers believing that they are less likely to contract lung cancer or disease than other smokers, 1st time sky divers believing that they are less at risk of an injury than other sky divers, & traders who think they are less exposed to losses in the mkts   
  Although the optimism bias occurs for both positive events, such as believing oneself to be more financially successful than others, & negative events, such as being less likely to have a drinking problem, there is more research & evidence suggesting that the bias is stronger for negative events   
  Optimism bias in relation to positive events often leads to feelings of well being & self esteem   
  Optimism bias in relation to negative events lead to consequences involving more risk, such as engaging in risky behaviors & not taking precautionary measures for safety   
  ABSOLUTE RISK IS WHEN RISK EST ARE COMPARED TO ACTUAL, KNOWN RISKS; COMPARATIVE RISK IS WHEN RISK EST ARE COMPARED TO RISKS AS EST BY A PEER GRP   
  The optimistic bias is typically measured through 2 determinants of risk: absolute risk & comparative risk   
  Absolute risk occurs where individuals are asked to est the likelihood of experiencing a negative event compared to the actual chance of experiencing a negative event   
  Absolute risk is the risk the individual perceived compared to the actual risk   
  Problems can occur when trying to measure absolute risk b/c it is extremely difficult to determine the actual risk statistic for a person  
  Comparative risk occurs where individuals are asked to est the likelihood of experiencing a negative event compared to how others of the same demographic grp est the risk   
  Comparative risk compares a person's risk est against the grp's risk est   
  In most cases optimism bias is measured in comparative risk forms, where people compare themselves against others, through direct & indirect comparisons   
  Direct comparisons ask whether an individual's own risk of experiencing an event is negative, positive or equal than someone else's risk   
  Indirect comparisons ask individuals to provide separate est of their own risk of experiencing an event & other's risk of experiencing the same event   
  After obtaining scores on risk est, researchers are able to use the info to determine if there is a difference in the average risk est of the individual compared to the average risk est of their peers   
  Generally in negative events, the mean risk of an individual appears lower than the risk est of a peer grp, ie individuals are often more optimistic than grps   
  Difference btwn the individual's risk est & the peer grp's risk est  is used to demonstrate the optimism bias effect   
  Optimism bias can only be defined at a grp level, b/c the individual's risk est could be accurate   
  W/o the ability to measure absolute risk, difficulties can arise in measurement procedures, b/c it is difficult to determine when someone is being optimistic, realistic, or pessimistic   
  Research suggests that the bias comes from an over est of grp risks rather than underestimating one's own risk   
  PEOPLE EXHIBIT OPTIMISM BIAS TO ENHANCE THEIR SELF IMAGE, TO PRESENT A BETTER PERSONAL IMAGE TO OTHERS, & B/C THEY BELIEVE THEY HAVE CONTROL OVER THE SITUATION   
  The factors leading to the optimistic bias can be categorized into 4 different grps: 
a.  desired end states of comparative judgment 
b.  cognitive mechanisms 
c.  info about the self vs a target 
d.  underlying affect 		  
  Many explanations for the optimistic bias come from the goals that people want and outcomes they wish to see   
  People tend to view their risks as less than others b/c they believe that this is what other people want to see   
  Optimism bias occurs as people strive to increase self enhancement & self presentation, & as people believe or perceive they have control of a situation   
  One's need for self enhancement is met b/c optimistic predictions are satisfying & it feels good to think that positive events will happen   
  People can control their anxiety & other negative emotions if they believe they are better off than others   
  People tend to focus on finding info that supports what they want to see happen, rather than what will happen to them   
  W/ regards to the optimistic bias, individuals will perceive events more favorably, b/c that is what they would like the outcome to be   
  People might lower their risks compared to others to make themselves look better than average:  they are less at risk than others & therefore better   
  Studies suggest that people attempt to estb & maintain a desired personal image in social situations   
  People are motivated to present themselves towards others in a good light, & some researchers suggest that the optimistic bias is a representative of self presentational processes:  people want to appear more well off than others   
  Maintaining one's self image by under est risk is not accomplished through conscious effort   
  In a study where participants believed their driving skills would be tested in either real life or driving simulations, people who believed they were to be tested in real life had less optimism bias & were more modest about their skills than individuals who would be tested through simulations   
  Studies suggest that individuals who present themselves in a pessimistic & more negative light are generally less accepted by the rest of society   
  The fact that people in general have a lower acceptance of people who are pessimistic or negative might contribute to overly optimistic attitudes   
  People tend to be more optimistically biased when they believe they have more control over events than others   
  People are more likely to think that they will not be harmed in a car accident if they are driving the vehicle   
  If someone believes that they have a lot of control over becoming infected w/  HIV, they are more likely to view their risk of contracting the disease to be low   
  Studies have suggested that the greater perceived control someone has, the greater their optimistic bias   
  Control is a stronger factor when it comes to personal risk assessments, but not when assessing others   
  OPTIMISM BIAS IS GREATER FOR: US CITIZENS & FOR STUDENTS, & LESS FOR THOSE W/ MORE EXPERIENCE   
  Participants from the US generally have higher levels of optimism bias relating to perceived control than those of other nationalities   
  Students also showed larger levels of the optimism bias than non students  
  The optimistic bias is strongest in situations where an individual needs to rely heavily on direct action & responsibility of situations   
  The factor of perceived control has the opposite effect of that of prior experience; control makes you feel more optimistic, experience less   
  Prior experience is typically assoc w/ less optimism bias b/c those w/ experience understand that one is not always in control of a situation   
  Prior experience suggests that events may be less controllable than previously believed   
  Prior experience is typically assoc w/ less optimism bias b/c those w/ experience imagine themselves at risk b/c they have a past experience of that level of risk   
  THE REPRESENTATIVENESS HEURISTIC HOLDS THAT INDIVIDUALS TEND TO THINK IN STEREOTYPICAL CATEGORIES RATHER THAN ABOUT THEIR ACTUAL EVENTS WHEN MAKING COMPARISONS   
  The est of likelihood assoc w/ the optimism bias are based on how closely an event matches a person's overall idea of the specific event   
  When drivers are asked to think about a car accident, they are more likely to assoc it w/ a bad driver, rather than just the average driver   
  Individuals compare themselves w/ the negative elements that come to mind, such as bad drivers, rather than an overall accurate comparison of the factors impacting a situation, such as mechanical failure, road conditions, etc   
  Individuals who compare themselves to friends, chose more vulnerable friends based on the events they were looking at   
  Individuals generally chose a specific friend based on if they resemble a given example, rather than just an average friend   
  People find examples that relate directly to what they are asked, resulting in representativeness heuristics   
  SINGULAR TARGET FOCUS BIAS IS THE RESULT OF THE FACT THAT WE KNOW MORE ABOUT A PARTICULAR OR SINGLE PERSON OR EVENT THAN WE KNOW ABOUT GRPS OF PEOPLE OR EVENTS   
  One of the difficulties of the optimistic bias is that people know more about themselves than they do about others   
  While individuals know how to think about themselves as a single person, they still think of others as a generalized grp, which leads to biased est & the inability to sufficiently understand their target or comparison grp   
  When making judgments & comparisons about their risk compared to others, people generally ignore the average person, but primarily focus on their own feelings & experiences   
  INTERPERSONAL DISTANCE BIAS IS THE RESULT OF THE TENDENCY TO MAKE BETTER JUDGMENTS ABOUT PEOPLE OR EVENTS WE ARE CLOSER TO   
  Perceived risk differences occur depending on how far or close a compared target is to an individual making a risk est   
  The greater the perceived distance btwn the self & the comparison target, the greater the perceived difference in risk   
  When one brings the comparison target closer to the individual, risk est appear closer together than if the comparison target was someone more distant to the participant   
  The impact of interpersonal distance on risk assessment is seen in that we make better judgments about our self, then less accurate est of risk about our in grp, & then the least accurate est of risk about an out grp   
  We tend to see grps closer to us on any interpersonal distance scale as more like ourselves & so they have a closer risk est to ourself   
  People demonstrate more optimism bias when making comparisons when the other is a vague individual, but biases are reduced when the other is a familiar person, such as a friend or family member   
  Interpersonal distance bias is due to the info we have about the individuals closest to us, which we do not have about other people  
  Individuals know a lot more about themselves than they do about others  
  B/c info about others is less available, info about the self vs others leads people to make specific conclusions about their own risk, but results in them having a harder time making conclusions about the risks of others   
  This leads to differences in judgments & conclusions about self risks compared to the risks of others, leading to larger gaps in the optimism bias   
  PERSON POSITIVITY BIAS IS THE TENDENCY TO EVALUATE A PERSON, OBJECT, OR EVENT MORE FAVORABLY THE MORE THE OBJECT RESEMBLES AN INDIVIDUAL HUMAN BEING   
  Generally, the more a comparison target resembles a specific person, the more familiar it will be   
  Grps of people are considered to be more abstract concepts, which leads to less favorable judgments   
  W/ regards to the optimistic bias, when people compare themselves to an average person, whether someone of the same sex or age, the target continues to be viewed as less human & less personified, which will result in less favorable comparisons btwn the self & others  
  EGOCENTRICITY RESULTS IN PEOPLE KNOWING MORE OF THEIR OWN INFO & RISK, WHICH THEY USE TO FORM MORE ACCURATE JUDGMENTS & DECISIONS THAN THEY MAKE ABOUT OTHERS, WHOM THEY KNOW LESS ABOUT   
  One difficulty, though, is that people have a large amt of knowledge about themselves, & less knowledge about others   
  When making decisions, people have to use other info available to them, such as population data, in order to learn more about their comparison grp   
  Egocentricity can relate to an optimism bias b/c while people are using the available info they have about themselves, they have more difficulty understanding, or access to correct info about others   
  Egocentric or self centered thinking is seen most commonly in adolescents & college students, who generally think more about themselves than others   
  It is also possible that someone can escape egocentric thinking   
  Grps who list all the factors for another grp that might influence their chances of experiencing a variety of events showed less optimistic bias in their own reports   
  A greater level of knowledge about others & their perceptions of their chances of risk bring the comparison grp closer to the participant   
  We typically underestimate the amt of control the average person has   
  We typically underestimate the control that others have in their lives & we typically overlook the control other have over their own outcomes   
  AFFECT BIAS RESULTS IN PEOPLE BEING MORE OPTIMISTIC WHEN THEY ARE IN A GOOD MOOD & LESS OPTIMISTIC WHEN THEY ARE IN A NEGATIVE MOOD   
  Sad moods reflect greater memories of negative events, which lead to more negative judgments, while positive moods promote happy memories & more positive feelings  
  Overall negative moods, including depression, result in increased personal risk est but less optimistic bias overall   
  Anxiety also leads to less optimistic bias, continuing to suggest that overall positive experiences & positive attitudes lead to more optimistic bias in events   

 
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 Outline on  Pessimism Bias / Negativity Bias 
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  PESSIMISM / NEGATIVITY BIAS OCCURS WHEN A PERSON ESTIMATES THEY ARE MORE LIKELY TO EXPERIENCE A NEGATIVE EVENT, OR LESS LIKELY TO EXPERIENCE A POSITIVE EVENT, COMPARED TO THE ACTUAL LIKELIHOOD OF THE EVENT 
 
  Pessimism bias is an effect in which people exaggerate the likelihood that negative things will happen to them   
  Pessimism bias denotes that we are in an improbable way worried about our future   
  People w/ depression are particularly likely to exhibit a pessimism bias, & this is likely explained by the fact depressed people think negatively in general  
  The negativity effect is the concept that, even when of equal intensity, things of a more negative nature, eg unpleasant thoughts, emotions, social interactions; harmful  /traumatic events, & so on have a greater effect on one's decision making, est of risk, interpersonal relationships, conception of self, & more than do neutral or positive things  
  Something very positive will generally have less of an impact on a person's behavior & cognition than something equally emotional but negative   
  THE FACTORS OF NEGATIVITY BIAS INCLUDE:  POTENCY, STEEPER GRADIENTS, DOMINANCE, & DIFFERENTIATION   
  Paul Rozin & Edward Royzman proposed factors of the negativity bias which explain its manifestation:  negative potency, steeper negative gradients, negativity dominance, & negative differentiation   
  1.  Negative potency refers to the notion that, even if they are of equal magnitude or emotionality, negative & positive items / events / etc are not equally salient   
  Rozin & Royzman note that this characteristic of the negativity bias is only empirically demonstrable in situations w/ inherent measurability, such as comparing how positively or negatively a change in temp is interpreted   
  2.  Positive & negative gradients are demonstrated in that negative events are perceived as increasingly more negative than positive events are increasingly positive, the closer one gets, spatially or temporally, to the affective event itself   
  There is a steeper negative gradient than positive gradient w/ respect to perceived potency or feeling   
  The negative experience of an impending dental surgery is perceived as increasingly more negative the closer one gets to the date of surgery than the positive experience of an impending party is perceived as increasingly more positive the closer one gets to the date of celebration, assuming for the sake of this example that these events are equally positive & negative   
  Rozin & Royzman argue that this characteristic is distinct from that of negative potency b/c there appears to be evidence of steeper negative slopes relative to positive slopes even when potency itself is low   
  3.  Negativity dominance describes the tendency for the combination of positive & negative items / events / etc to skew towards an overall more negative interpretation than would be suggested by the summation of the individual positive & negative components   
  When experiencing a combination of positive & negative events, the whole is more negative than the sum of its parts   
  4.  Negative differentiation is consistent w/ evidence suggesting that the conceptualization of negativity is more elaborate & complex than that of positivity  
  Negative vocabulary is more richly descriptive of the affective experience than that of positive vocabulary   
  There are more terms employed to indicate negative emotions than positive emotions   
  The notion of negative differentiation is consistent w/ the mobilization minimization hypothesis, which posits that negative events, as a consequence of this complexity, require a greater mobilization of cognitive resources to deal w/ the affective experience & a greater effort to minimize the consequences  
  Negative info requires greater info processing resources & activity than does positive info   
  People tend to think & reason more about negative events than positive events   
  Neurological differences also pt to greater processing of negative info: participants exhibit greater event related potentials when reading about, or viewing photographs of, people performing negative acts that were incongruent w/ their traits than when reading about incongruent positive acts   
  The additional processing of  negative info as compared to positive info leads to differences btwn positive & negative info in attn, perception, learning, & memory.  
  WHEN JUDGING CHARACTER, WE USE & GIVE MORE EMPHASIS TO NEGATIVE INFO THAN POSITIVE INFO   
  People consider negative info to be more diagnostic of an individual's character than positive info; negative info is more useful than positive info in forming an overall impression   
  The greater importance given to negative info when judging character is supported by indications of higher confidence in the accuracy of one's formed impression when it was formed more on the basis of negative traits than positive traits  
  People consider negative info to be more important to impression formation &, when it is available to them, they are subsequently more confident   
  An oft cited paradox is that a dishonest person can sometimes act honestly while still being considered to be predominantly dishonest; on the other hand, an honest person who sometimes does dishonest things will likely be reclassified as a dishonest person   
  It is expected that a dishonest person will occasionally be honest, but this honesty will not counteract the prior demonstrations of dishonesty   
  Honesty is considered more easily tarnished by acts of dishonesty   
  Honesty itself would then be not diagnostic of an honest nature, only the absence of dishonesty   
  NEGATIVE EVENTS DRAW OUR ATTN MORE THAN POSITIVE EVENTS & WE HAVE STRONGER MORE LASTING MEMORIES OF NEGATIVE EVENTS THAN POSITIVE EVENTS   
  Negativity is essentially an attention magnet  
  When tasked w/ forming an impression of presented target individuals, participants spent longer looking at negative photographs than they did looking at positive photographs   
  Participants registered more eye blinks when studying negative words than positive words & blinking rate are positively linked to cognitive activity   
  Bad news sells more papers & the bulk of successful novels are full of negative events & turmoil   
  When taken in conjunction w/ the lab based experiments, there is strong support for the notion that negative info generally has a stronger pull on attn than does positive info   
  In relation to both intentional memory & unintentional memory, ie things we try to remember & things we happen to notice or remember, we exhibit more retention of negative events, people, traits, factors, & so on than of positive events, etc   
  When asked to recall a recent emotional event, people tend to report negative events more often than they report positive events   
  People underestimate how frequently they experience positive affect, in that they more often forget the positively emotional experiences than they forget negatively emotional experiences   
  WHEN DECISION MAKING, POTENTIAL COSTS HAVE A GREATER IMPACT THAN POTENTIAL REWARDS  
  Studies of the negativity bias have also been related to research w/in the domain of decision making, specifically as it relates to risk aversion or loss aversion   
  When presented w/ a situation in which a person stands to either gain something or lose something depending on the outcome, potential costs are more heavily considered than potential gains   
  The greater consideration of losses, ie negative outcomes for a particular decision, is in line w/ the principle of negative potency as proposed by Rozin & Royzman   
  This issue of negativity & loss aversion as it relates to decision mking is most notable addressed by Drs. Daniel Kahneman's & Amos Tversky's prospect theory   
 
 SCHADENFREUDE & PESSIMISM PORN ARE TERMS DESCRIBING BOTH THE JOY WE FIND IN NEGATIVITY & THE URGE WE HAVE TO OBSERVE NEGATIVITY 
 
  Schadenfreude denotes the tendency for people to find joy is the misfortune of others   
  Schadenfreude is a normal emotion in that when other people are down, we look better to others & even to ourselves   
  Pessimism porn is a neologism coined in 2009 during the 2007 - 2012 global financial crisis to describe the alleged eschatological & survivalist thrill some people derived from predicting, reading & fantasizing about the collapse of civil society through the destruction of the world's economic system  
  A neologism is a newly coined word or a new meaning for an old word   
  Pessimism porn's coinage is attributed to Hugo Lindgren when he wrote about the concept in NY in Feb 2009  
  Like real porn, the econ variety gives you the illusion of control, & similarly it only leaves you hungry for more  
  While the concept of pessimism porn was developed around econ disaster, it is applicable for our tendency to be fascinated by any type of disaster from car wrecks to the affairs & break ups of movie stars   

 
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 Outline on  Normalcy Bias
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  NORMALCY BIAS IS THE COGNITIVE STATE OR FEELING THAT A SITUATION IS NORMAL OR TYPICAL WHEN IN FACT IT IS A CRISIS OR DISASTER 
 
  Normalcy bias, or normality bias, is a mental state people enter when facing a disaster where people tend to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster & its possible effects   
  Normalcy bias may result in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, & on a larger scale, make it more difficult for govts to motivate the populace in its disaster preparations   
  Often people will not leave a disaster area, they will not stock pile essential goods, they underestimate how severe the disaster might be, & they don't follow govt instructions for preparation   
  The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred, then it never will occur   
  Normalcy bias can result in the inability of people to cope w/ a disaster once it occurs   
  People w/ a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before  
  People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation   
  People injured, experiencing a disaster or under a great threat may also act as if nothing is out of the ordinary   
  One form of normalcy bias is situational blindness or even total denial 
 
  The denial form of normalcy bias may be seen in the person acts as if nothing unusual had happened even though an extraordinary disaster or crisis has happened 
 
  Normalcy can impact fire fighters, soldiers, emergency med personnel, police, & so on who face crises everyday & come to see such situations as another day, a normal day at work   
  Normalcy can blind a person to creeping risk such that they cannot distinguish btwn a 'normal crisis situation' & an 'extraordinary crisis situation'   
  NORMALCY BIAS HAS THE EFFECT THAT B/C PEOPLE DO NOT RECOGNIZE A CRISIS, THEY FAIL TO REACT TO IT, THUS INCREASING THEIR RISK  
  The normalcy bias often results in unnecessary deaths in disaster situations   
  The lack of preparation for disasters often leads to inadequate shelter, supplies, & evac plans   
  Even when all these things are in place, individuals w/ a normalcy bias often refuse to leave their homes   
  Normalcy bias can cause people to drastically underestimate the effects of a disaster or crisis   
  Those experiencing a normalcy bias think that everything will be all right, while info from the radio, television, or neighbors gives them reason to believe there is a risk   
  The normalcy bias normally creates a cognitive dissonance in that people cognitively believe everything is normal, but emotionally they may experience anxiety or sometimes even joy or elation   
  Some of those experiencing a normalcy bias manage to eliminate it by refusing to believe new warnings coming in & refusing to evacuate, maintaining the normalcy bias, while others eliminate the dissonance by escaping the danger   
  The possibility that some may refuse to evacuate causes significant problems in disaster planning   
  Many times for emergency personnel, it is a challenge to distinguish btwn a typical fire or hurricane & one that is extraordinary & provides more danger than a 'normal' fire or hurricane   
  NORMALCY BIAS IS IMPACTED BY INFO OVERLOAD IN A CRISIS, OR EMOTIONAL OVERLOAD IN A CRISIS   
  The normalcy bias may be caused in part by the way the brain processes new data   
  Research suggests that even when the brain is calm, it takes 8–10 seconds to process new info   
  Stress slows the process of info uptake, & when the brain cannot find an acceptable response to a situation, it fixates on a single & sometimes default solution that may or may not be correct  
  An evolutionary reason for this response could be that paralysis gives an animal a better chance of surviving an attack; predators are less likely to see prey that isn't moving  
  The denial quality of the normalcy bias may result from the traditional psych mechanism of denial, where a psyche that is overwhelmed by a situation, person, & so on simply refuses to accept the existence of that situation or person   
  A special type of normalcy is tunnel vision which is when a person focuses on some minute detail while a crisis is occurring   
  An example of tunnel vision might be a person in a burning home who is trying to collect spilled change   
  THE CORRECT RESPONSE TO NORMALCY BIAS IS NOT TO SEE CRISIS EVERYWHERE, IT IS TO SEE THE SITUATION AS IT IS   
  The opposite of normalcy bias would be overreaction, 'worst case thinking' bias, pessimism bias, or optimism bias in which small deviations from normality are dealt w/ as signaling an impending catastrophe or an unrealistic sense of optimism or freedom   
  The fix for a normalcy bias is not a prediction of doomsday, rather it is a realistic assessment of a situation   
  Logically, both under reaction, 'normalcy bias' & overreaction 'worst case thinking' are cognitive flaws   

 
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 Outline on  Black Swan Events
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  BLACK SWAN EVENTS ARE THOSE THAT ARE GREATER IN MAGNITUDE & UNEXPECTEDNESS THAN EVEN 'NORMAL' CRISES OR DISASTERS 
 
  Black swan events or black swan theory is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, & is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact w/ the benefit of hindsight   
  Black swan events were introduced by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2001 book Fooled By Randomness, which concerned financial events   
  The concept of black swan events was 1st developed to explain 'outlier events' in finance, but such conceptions of totally extraordinary, random, inconceivable or unexpected events have been considered throughout history in phil, the humanities, the soc sci, & the phys sci by way of many concepts   
  In Taleb's 2007 book The Black Swan, he extended the metaphor to events outside of fin mkts   
  The disproportionate role of high profile, hard to predict, & rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, tech, extraordinary effects in whatever field you are in, & so on   
  The non computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods, owing to the very nature of small probabilities, is what makes them outlier events instead of merely difficult to predict events   
  The psychological biases that make people individually & collectively blind to uncertainty & unaware of the massive role of the rare event in histl affairs is not an issue for black swan events b/c even those w/ 'perfect insight' cannot predict them   
  Like the earlier phil considerations of the unknowable, black swan theory refers to unexpected events of large magnitude & consequence & their dominant role in life / history   
  Black swan events, considered extreme outliers, collectively play vastly larger roles than regular occurrences, & even a larger role than your general unexpected event, crisis or disaster b/c they are more extreme or powerful & they are completely unexpected   
  Black swan events compared to an unexpected  crisis or disaster is different in that its magnitude is greater & its uniqueness or unexpectedness is greater   
  THE CONCEPTION OF THE UNPREDICTABLE / INCONCEIVABLE EVENT HAS BEEN CONSIDERED BY HUMANS SINCE WE 1ST BEGAN TRYING TO UNDERSTAND EVENTS / MAKE PREDICTIONS   
  Taleb regards almost all major scientific discoveries, histl events, & artistic accomplishments as black swans, undirected & unpredicted   
  Taleb gives the rise of the internet, the personal computer, World War I, dissolution of the Soviet Union, & the Sept 2001 attacks as examples of black swan events   
  The phrase 'black swan' derives from a Latin expression; its oldest known occurrence is the poet Juvenal's (circa 1 AD - 2 AD) characterization of something being 'a rare bird in the lands & very much like a black swan'   
  When the phrase was coined, the black swan was presumed not to exist   
  The importance of the black swan metaphor lies in its analogy to the fragility of any system of thought   
  A set of conclusions is potentially undone once any of its fundamental postulates is disproved   
  In this case, the observation of a single black swan would be the undoing of the logic of any system of thought, as well as any reasoning that followed from that underlying logic   
  Juvenal's phrase was a common expression in 16th C London as a statement of impossibility   
  The London expression of the black swan derives from the Old World presumption that all swans must be white b/c all histl records of swans reported that all were white   
  In that context, a black swan was impossible or at least nonexistent   
  After Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh discovered black swans in Western Australia in 1697, the term metamorphosed to connote that a perceived impossibility might later be disproved   
  Mid 18th C philosopher David Hume put it very gracefully:  'No amt of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion'   
  Taleb notes that in the 19th C John Stuart Mill used the black swan logical fallacy as a new term to identify falsification   
  BLACK SWAN EVENTS:  ARE OUTLIERS, HAVE MAJOR IMPACTS, ARE INCONCEIVABLE, & ARE RATIONALIZED AFTER THE FACT   
  What we call a black swan is an event w/ the attributes of: being an outlier, carrying an extreme impact, being unpredicted / unpredictable, being rationalized after the fact   
  a.  A black swan event is an outlier in that it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, b/c nothing in the past can convincingly pt to its possibility 
 
  b.  A black swan event carries an extreme 'impact'   
  c.  A black swan event is unpredictable in that while all predictions made in the pre black swan era rationally explored every conceivable outcome, the unexpected occurred   
  d.  A black swan event in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable & predictable   
  After the first recorded instance of the event, it is rationalized by hindsight, as if it could have been expected; that is, the relevant data were available but unaccounted for in risk mitigation programs   
  TALEB HOLDS THAT WE ARE BETTER OFF NOT TRYING TO PREDICT BLACK SWAN EVENTS; WHAT WE SHOULD DO IS PREPARE A ROBUST, ADAPTABLE SYS THAT WILL DEAL W/ THE UNEXPECTED   
  Taleb holds that we are better off not attempting to predict black swan events, but rather to build robustness against negative ones that occur & be able to exploit positive ones  
  Taleb contends that banks & trading firms are very vulnerable to hazardous black swan events & are exposed to unpredictable losses   
  On the subject of business in particular, Taleb is highly critical of the widespread use of the normal distribution model as the basis for calculating risk   
  A paper produced by academics from Oxford University & based on data from 1,471 IT projects showed that although the average cost overrun was only 27%, one in six of the projects had a cost overrun of 200% & a schedule overrun of almost 70%  
  In the second edition of The Black Swan, Taleb provides 'Ten Principles for a Black Swan Robust Society'  
  Taleb states that a black swan event depends on the observer   
  For example, what may be a black swan surprise for a turkey is not a black swan surprise to its butcher; hence the objective should be to 'avoid being the turkey' by identifying areas of vulnerability in order to 'turn the Black Swans white'   
  UNEXPECTED EVENTS HAVE BEEN EXAMINED USING RATIONAL & EMPIRICAL BASED SYSTEMS   
  Taleb's black swan is different from the earlier philosophical versions of the problem, specifically in epistemology, as it concerns a phenomenon w/ specific empirical & statistical properties which he calls, 'the 4th quadrant'   
  Taleb's problem is about epistemic limitations in some parts of the areas covered in decision making   
  These limitations are twofold: philosophical, which is often based on rationality, logic & mathematical & empirical, which often based on human known epistemic biases   
  The philosophical problem is about the decrease in knowledge when it comes to rare events as these are not visible in past samples & therefore require a strong a priori, or an extrapolating theory; accordingly predictions of events depend more & more on theories when their probability is small   
 
 In the fourth quadrant, knowledge is uncertain & consequences are large, requiring more robustness.  
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 The Table: Four Quadrants of the Known / Unknown & Consequential / Inconsequential Factors of Events or Decisions demonstrates that black swan events occur in quadrant 4 where info is unknown & the consequences are large   
  According to Taleb, thinkers who came before him who dealt w/ the notion of the improbable, such as Hume, Mill, & Popper focused on the problem of induction in logic, specifically, that of drawing general conclusions from specific observations   
  Taleb's claim is that almost all consequential events in history come from the unexpected, yet humans later convince themselves that these events are explainable in hindsight   

 
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Table: Four Quadrants of the Known / Unknown & Consequential / Inconsequential Factors of Events or Decisions 
 
Known / Hi Certainty
Unknown / Hi Uncertainty
Inconsequential
   1.
Known
&
Inconsequential
   2.
Unknown
&
Inconsequential
Consequential
   3.
Known
&
Consequential
   4.
Unknown
&
Consequential
The Table: Four Quadrants of the Known / Unknown & Consequential / Inconsequential Factors of Events or Decisions demonstrates that black swan events occur in quadrant 4 where info is unknown & the consequences are large 

 
  THE LUDIC FALLACY HOLDS THAT WE SHOULD EXPECT AN UNEXPECTED EVENT TO OCCUR, BUT WE CAN NEVER KNOW WHEN TO EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED, IF EVER, & WHAT THE UNEXPECTED WILL BE   
  One problem, labeled the Ludic fallacy by Taleb, is the belief that the unstructured randomness found in life resembles the structured randomness found in games   
  This stems from the assumption that the unexpected may be predicted by extrapolating from variations in statistics based on past observations, esp when these statistics are presumed to represent samples from a normal distribution   
  These concerns often are highly relevant in financial markets, where major players sometimes assume normal distributions when using value at risk models, although market returns typically have fat tail distributions  
  The Ludic fallacy results from the misuse of games to model real life situations b/c such games create 'unexpected events'   
           BLACK SWAN EVENTS DEMONSTRATE THAT CONVENTIONAL LOGIC IS INADEQUATE FOR MANY SITUATIONS             
  More generally, decision theory, based on a fixed universe or a model of possible outcomes, ignores & minimizes the effect of events that are 'outside the model'   
  For instance, a simple model of daily stock mkt returns may include extreme moves such as Black Monday (1987), but might not model the breakdown of mkts following the 9/11 attacks   
  A fixed model considers the 'known unknowns,' but ignores the 'unknown unknowns'   
 
 
  The famous statement of Donald Rumsfeld in a DoD press briefing 2002 is said to have been inspired by a presentation of Taleb in the DoD shortly before   
  Taleb's 2001 book Fooled By Randomness was about financial events, but had already introduced the Black Swan concept   
  Taleb notes that statistical distributions other than the standard bell curve are not usable w/ precision, but often are more descriptive, such as the fractal, power law, or scalable distributions & that awareness of these might help to temper expectations   
  Many events simply are w/o precedent, undercutting the basis of the type of reasoning based on statistical curves altogether   
  Taleb also argues for the use of counterfactual reasoning when considering risk   

 
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 Outline on  Future Scenarios
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  ONE IMPORTANT ASPECT OF FUTUROLOGY IS TO OFFER FUTURE SCENARIOS, IE PREDICTIONS OF AN OUTLINE OF A HYPOTHESIZED CHAIN OF EVENTS 
 
  A scenario is an outline of a hypothesized chain of events   
  There are many possible scenarios that spring from the key themes in society   
  Will the internet bring about new patters of human interaction?
Will we be able to cope w/ the env stresses that increasing industrialization & rapid population growth will bring to many parts of the world?
Will The US retain its position as the world's most powerful & influential nation?
Will more nations move up from peripheral status to join the semi periphery & care nations of the future world sys?
What kind of problems will the future bring for local regional, & international development?
What new tech is likely to have the most impact in reshaping societies?
Will globalization undermine regional cultures?
Will tech & human determination be able to cope w/ the env stresses that industrialization in the periphery & rapid pop increases will create?
Will new regions emerge based on new types of connectivity such as trade, the internet, or any number of pol mvmts such as mobilization against globalization or the human rts mvmt?		  
  Using what social scientists from a range of fields, developing a scenario is done by looking back at the way that the present condition related to the scenario has unfolded   
  The next step is to look at how present conditions are trending   
  The 3rd step is to use what is known about soc change, again from a number of soc sci fields, & the basic principles of the soc sciences to begin to map out the kinds of structures, cultures, processes, & dynamics that the future most probably holds   
  Future scenarios must be mapped out from a combination of existing structures, & budding trends   
  The future must be anticipated from how the shreds of tradition & the strands of contemporary change will be rewoven into new societies 
 
  While developing future scenarios is speculative & complex, we can draw w/ a good deal of confidence on what we know about soc processes, soc change & the major principles of the soc sciences 
 
  Futurists see soc change as a composite aggregation, ie not a simple linear causal change, of local or micro social grpings interacting to create the larger processes & structures of change that operate w/in the dynamic framework of the world sys 
 
  Many important dimensions exist to soc org & soc change, from the demographic dimension through the urban 
 
  IN FORECASTING SCENARIOS, IT IS CLEAR THAT SOME ASPECTS ARE MORE PREDICTABLE THAN OTHERS, & SOME ASPECTS ARE MORE CHAOTIC THAN OTHERS   
  As we look to the future, we can appreciate that some dimensions of soc org are more certain than others   
  In some ways the future is already here, embedded in the world's instit structures & in the dynamics of its pop   
  We know more about demographics than at any time in history but there are still major gaps in our knowledge   
  We know a much more than in the past about the dist of resources & constraints, about the character of local & regional econs, about the legal & pol frameworks w/in which soc change will take place   
  We also merely guess at some aspects of the future   
  Two of the most speculative realms are those of pol & tech   
  While we can foresee some of the possibilities, politics & technology are both likely to spring surprises at any time   
  We may be able to understand, for example, the spread & intensification of ethno nationalism, a new railway era based on high speed trains, the rise of energy efficiency econs, the diversification of wkplace, & more   
  We now know we had hints at such events as Sept 11th, the rise of ISIS, challenges from N Korea, conflicts btwn China & Japan, & more, but these events are essentially nearly impossible to predict, w/ current social science   
  Such events as Sept 11th are a powerful example of the sort of essentially unpredictable events that can deliver a blow the the econ, draw the nation into full military status, & transform daily life in the US   
  IN SOME WAYS, THE FUTURE IS ALREADY HERE, EMBEDDED IN THE WORLD'S INSTITL STRUCTURE & IN THE DYNAMICS OF ITS POPULATION   
  In envisioning any future scenario, any issues or topics, including:  the internet, pop, the env, soc mvmts, & more, will all interact in unique ways to impact any future scenario   
  New & emerging technologies that are likely to have a large impact in reshaping any society including:  advanced transportation, biotechnology, materials technology, info tech esp artificial intelligence (AI), war, & others   
  The changes involved in shaping future societies will inevitably bring some critical issues, conflicts, & threats, including issue that center on cultural dissonance & sustainability   
  THERE ARE MANY CATEGORIES OF FUTURE SCENARIOS, SUCH AS:  OPTIMISTIC, MIDDLING, PESSIMISTIC, FRAMEWORK, SHORT TERM, MID TERM, LONG TERM, & MORE   
  There are many visionary scenarios, but broadly speaking, futurists' projections can be divided into 3 kinds:  optimistic, middling, & pessimistic   
  Optimistic futurists stress the potential for tech innovations to discover & harness new resources, to provide faster & more effective means to transportation & communication, & to make possible new ways of living   
  The optimistic futurist is often characterized by science fiction cities of mile high skyscrapers & spaceship style living pods, by bioecological harmony, & by unprecedented social & cultural progress through the info hwys of cyberspace   
  Optimistic futurists projects a world that will be stabilized & homogenized by supranational govts, world govts, or even multi world govts   
  Pessimistic futurists stress  the finite nature of Earth's resources, the fragility of its env, & the pop growth rates that exceed the capacity of peripheral regions to sustain them   
  Pessimistic futurists emphasize the probability of a sharp polarization btwn the haves & the have nots at every scale   
  Doomsday forecasting is characterized by scenarios that include irretrievable env degradation, increasing soc & econ polarization, the breakdown of law & order, widespread violent conflicts & war, & more   
  The middling futurists often recognize some, but not all of the pts made by the optimists & the pessimists, offering analysis about why particular possibilities may or may not manifest   
  For the middling futurist, history has shown that few of the major predictions of world changing tech or human harmony have come true as seen in the failure to develop unlimited clean energy, or transportation, or the lack of human like computers or robots   
  The middling futurist recognizes that other tech & human relationships unforeseen by any have become common, such as mass jet flight, smart phones, the internet, TV, & more   
  For the middling futurist, history has shown that few of the major doomsday scenarios have come to be, including the population bomb, crashing tech, global war, env collapse, & more   
  Thus for the middling  futurist, new favorable situations do & will arise, but they are rarely as important as people imagine, & dire scenarios do present themselves, but to date people / societies have always found ways to mitigate them   
  The middling futurists critique of the optimist & pessimist futurists is that whatever scenarios arise, people will adjust to them  
  Future events happen in a context of humans & human societies that are adaptive to change  
  Changes does not happen to people & societies; change happens with & in people & societies   
  Middling futurists recognize that events may overwhelm people & societies, but to date, to the credit of the resilience of humanity, it has not happened   
  A USEFUL RANGE OF SCENARIOS MIGHT INCLUDE:  THE CONVENTIONAL WORLD, REFERENCE, BALANCED GROWTH, BARBARISM, SOCIAL BREAKDOWN, FORTRESS WORLD, GREAT TRANSITIONS, GLOBAL GOV, & NEW SUSTAINABILITY SCENARIOS   
 . Possible framework level scenarios include:  The Global Scenario Grp, Stockhholm Env Insit posits 6 scenarios, 2 for each of 3 types of conventional world, barbarism, & great transitions   
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 Conventional World Scenarios envision a world in which development is governed by gradual & steady ind growth  
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          Reference Scenarios assume that most of the world's regional econs will open & that unreg mkts will expand   
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          Balanced Growth Scenarios see the implementation of policy reforms that guide econ growth & sustain the env   
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 Barbarism scenarios are characterized by:  persistent poverty, pop pressure, resource shortages, disastrous env problems, & more, all which lead to localized armed conflicts & violence in peripheral regions, as well as by:  rising unemployment, depressions, political instability, outbreaks of civil disorder, & more in core regions   
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          Social Breakdown Scenarios see chaos & random violence diverting significant levels of resources from econ growth to security   
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          Fortress World Scenarios result from the core regions recognizing that the crisis that is mounting & so create alliances among themselves to protect their own interests   
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           Dark Ages are predicted by some observers for the US b/c individual & institutional morality is in decline   
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 Great Transitions Scenarios see the world's regions evolve to a higher stage   
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          Global Governance Scenarios find individuals, instits, & states restrict certain activities & undertake others for the common global good   
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          New Sustainability Scenarios see an increase in tech & econ growth which are constrained in the core & dominated by transnat corps   

 
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 Outline on the  Conventional World Scenarios
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  THE CONVENTIONAL WORLD SCENARIO HAS THE VISION OF A WORLD IN WHICH DEVELOPMENT IS GOVERNED BY GRADUAL & STEADY INDUSTRIAL GROWTH 
 
  Conventional World Scenarios envision a world in which development is governed by gradual & steady ind growth   
  The conventional world scenario most closely matches the historical record of the 20th C, & thus many social scientists extrapolate this record to predict that it is the most likely in the future   
  While the population grows, world econ output expands indefinitely as consumption & production practices in peripheral & semi peripheral regions converge toward those of the increasingly rich core nations   
  The regions of the world become progressively more interdependent as the competitive private mkt remains the main engine for econ growth  
  Transnational corps increase their role as the dominant econ node of the global, borderless econ   
  The liberal state persists as the dominant unit of governance  
  Variations of the conventional world futures differ in terms of political intervention & impacts   

 
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 Outline on  Reference Scenarios
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  REFERENCE SCENARIOS ASSUME THAT MOST OF THE WORLD'S REGIONAL ECONS WILL OPEN & THAT LARGELY UNREGULATED MKTS WILL EXPAND GLOBALLY 
 
  Reference scenarios assume that most of the world's regional econs will open & that unreg mkts will expand   
  New & expanded mkts foster rapid tech development   
  Pop growth increases in the peripheral & semi peripheral regions of the world, & the pop of most of the core regions grow slowly or not at all   
  As the core gets richer, the marginalized become increasingly poor & inequality increases  
  Env qual improves in some of the core regions & gets worse in the periphery & overall global env conditions deteriorate due to global climate change   
  Social justice issues intensify   
  Today, one can say that mkts are still on the trend of opening up & the inequality gap btwn the rich & poor nations is increasing, & thus at present time the reference scenario is becoming manifest   

 
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 Outline on  Balanced Growth Scenarios
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  BALANCED GROWTH SCENARIOS ASSUME THE IMPLEMENTATION OF POLICY REFORMS THAT GUIDE ECON GROWTH & SUSTAIN THE ENV 
 
  Balanced growth results from the:  intro of better tech, reduction of subsidies for nat resource use, imposition of pollution taxes, land reform, development incentives, increased foreign aid for education, health, & broader econ opportunities in the periphery & semi periphery   
  The gap btwn the elite & the marginalized decreases   
  The gap btwn the elite & the marginalized is less than in the reference scenario   
  The poor regions of the world are stabilized & widespread soc conflict is avoided   
  Balanced growth reduces poverty n the periphery & semi periphery, which reduces the motivation for radicalization   
  Declining radicalization has the effect of enhancing opportunities for balanced growth, & so the cycle of cultural, social, political & econ progress is enhanced   

 
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 Outline on  Barbarism Scenarios
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  BARBARISM SCENARIOS ASSUME THAT THE CONTEMPORARY NEGATIVE STRESSES PRESENT IN THE WORLD TODAY OVERWHELM THE COPING CAPACITY OF MKTS & INSTITS IN THE FUTURE 
 
  Barbarism scenarios are characterized by:  persistent poverty, pop pressure, resource shortages, disastrous env problems, & more, all which lead to localized armed conflicts & violence in peripheral regions, as well as by:  rising unemployment, depressions, political instability, outbreaks of civil disorder in core regions, & more   
  The world veers toward barbarism as regions w/ declining physical amenities experience breakdown   
  Growing pops, persistent poverty, resources shortages, increasingly disastrous env problems, & more lead to the barbarization of the marginalized regions   
  As states lose relevance & power compared to multinational corps, soc welfare policies are increasingly abandoned in favor of corp profitability   
  Throughout the world the rich & powerful become entrenched in militarized neighborhoods & 'secure homelands,' surrounded by extensive tracts of  impoverished neighborhoods & regions   
  Barbarism scenarios invite the probability of more widespread state terrorism & terrorist orgs   
  One conceivable outcome of widespread terrorism is intl pol disorder & the collapse of econ globalization   
  It is apparent to observers that one goal of the Sept 11, 201 terrorist attacks on the WTC & the Pentagon was to destroy the US econ b/c of  its role in globalization   
  In a future of barbarism, soc welfare policies are increasingly abandoned in favor of productivity & competitiveness policies as states lose relevance & power compared to multinational corps   
  The marginalized experience growing env pollution & natural resources constraints 
 
  Rather than full scale wars, the result of collapsed econs, pollution & climate change, nat res shortages, pestilence, & more is small scale armed conflict & violence 
 

 
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 Outline on  Social Breakdown Scenarios
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  SOCIAL BREAKDOWN SCENARIOS FORETELL CHAOS & RANDOM VIOLENCE DIVERTING SIGNIFICANT LEVELS OF RESOURCES FROM ECON GROWTH TO SECURITY CONCERNS 
 
  Civil order breaks down as states become too weak to set the global econ back on track   
  As refugees flee from one disaster after another, they destabilize neighboring regions   
  States pour their resources into police powers, border fences, guards, & tech based security   
  Monitoring the mvmts & activities of citizens, & ultimately limiting or obstructing trade & travel diverts resources from the econ to security   
  The result of a high expenditure of resources on security is the collapse of globalization   
  Overburdened by rising unemployment, depressions, political instability, & outbreaks of civil disorder in elite, marginalized, & embattled regions results in everyone getting poorer   

 
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 Outline on  Fortress World Scenarios
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  FORTRESS WORLD SCENARIOS PREDICT THAT THE CORE REGIONS RECOGNIZE THAT THE CRISIS THAT IS MOUNTING & CREATE ALLIANCES AMONG THEMSELVES TO PROTECT THEIR OWN INTERESTS 
 
  W/ the multinational corps as their agents, the rich & powerful become entrenched, surrounded by oceans of misery   
  The result of a the elites' pursuit of refuge is a society of elite & marginalized classes w/ entry into the elite by birth only   
  Strategic reserves of fossil fuels, minerals, freshwater, & genetic diversity are put under military control by the upper class   
  While the impacts of pollution are limited for the elite, pollution & its noxious health effects increase for the marginalized classes   

 
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 Outline on the  Dark Ages Ahead
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  SOME OBSERVERS SEE A DARK AGES AHEAD FOR THE US B/C OF A DECLINE IN BOTH PERSONAL & CIVIC MORALS 
 
  Dark Ages are predicted by some observers for the US b/c individual & institutional morality is in decline   
  Jane Jacobs was recognized in 2004 by Business Week magazine as one of the most influential public intellectuals in No Am in the last 75 yrs   
  Jacobs argues that the US is slipping toward the beginning of a new 'Dark Age' as a result of the deterioration of the pillars of society:  community, family, higher ed, the application of science & tech, the integrity of the professions, & the role of govt in relation ot society's needs & potential   
  Jacobs has long been an expert on cities & urban life   
  Jacob's concerns about a new dark age are based on current problems in urban development   
  For Jacob's, a culture is unsalvageable if stabilizing forces themselves become ruined   
  The roots of Jacob's concerns are based on evidence of corp immorality, the deintellectuallization of universities, the commercialization of science, & a mvmt in govt to return to laissez faire based policies   
  Jacobs believes that:   
  -  corp immorality in the mkt place has displaced entrepreneurship 
 
  -  universities serve employers & act as credential factories, stripping the music, art, ethics, idealism, & notion of the public good out of ed 
 
  -  scientific research is increasingly & immorally being bought by corps or suppressed & ignored by govts 
 
  -  the political econ is abandoning the stewardship of urban & regional development 
 
  Universities are complicit in allowing scientific research to be controlled & sometimes suppressed by corps & govts 
 
  Rather than serving as one of the cultural pillars of society, universities now serve firms & act as 'colleges of heraldry,' awarding grads a coat of arms, ie a diploma, to distinguish them from those w/o credentials 
 
  Jacobs applauds the fact that the professions, esp the accountants, bankers, lawyers & other financial professions ethics & practices have serially been called into question in relation to the vast corp scandals & the recessions of the past 3 decades 
 
  The designs by the public pol professionals are implicated by Jacobs in the degradation of urban trends 
 
  Cities, the vital econ engines & crucibles of cultural change & innovation, are being starved of the money they need by nat, state, & local govts   
  Govt policies are responsible for sagging public transit & public ed sys, increasing pollution, increasing soc polarization, the erosion of  community, & the sullenness of citizen   
  Familiar are rigged to fail by public policies that unintentionally, force both parents to work to meet the financial needs for themselves & their children   
  Jacobs argues that communities are rigged to fail by public pol that foster sprawling, placeless, & automobile dependent suburbs, a re examination of her critique in the The Death & Life of Great Am Cities  
  Jacobs believes there is time for reflective actions   
  If society accepts that corrective actions are in fact warranted, then a foundation of knowledge will be fundamental to the analysis necessary in order to contribute effectively to countervailing forces   
  Many corners of society deny the existence of its fundamental problems are a result of factors capable of being mitigated by human action, including:  crime, poverty, climate change, econ inequality, & more   
  Deniers argue that either these problems do not exist, that humans did not cause them, that they are 'natural' even if caused by humans, that they are 'natural', & more   

 
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 Outline on  Great Transitions Scenarios
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  GREAT TRANSITIONS SCENARIOS PRESENT THE MOST OPTIMISTIC FUTURES 
 
  W/in the great transitions scenarios the world's regions evolve to a higher stage in the major spheres of society:  justice & equality, econ, politics, culture, & more   
  Although great transitions scenarios may seem naive & improbable, they are not impossible & may even be necessary to achieve the goals of sustainability & equality   
  A noteworthy pt about the great transitions scenarios is that we have both the physical & the social tech to achieve a great transition; what we lack is the will power / political agreement / leadership   
  While there is a wide debate on the obstacles to the great transitions scenarios, two important obstacles are widely agreed upon:  the elites & the terrorist anti modernists   
  One obstacle to the great transitions scenarios is the willingness of the elite & the major corps to develop into democratic econ instit creating more econ equality   
  One obstacle to the great transitions scenarios is the ability of the developed world to convince violent opponents, eg terrorists & rogue nations, that violence is not the solution & that a great transitions future holds equitable benefits for them   
  Terrorists, in the name of some religion or ideology who oppose the developed nations, are in some ways responding to the ill effects of earlier colonialism & to the very ideals of modern society   
  While there is a range of great transitions scenarios, the two most common are the global governance scenarios & the new sustainability scenarios   

 
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 Outline on  Global Governance Scenarios
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  GLOBAL GOVT SCENARIOS ARE BUILT UPON A COLLECTIVE REALIZATION THAT INDIVIDUALS, ORGS, INSTITS, & STATES MUST UNDERTAKE CERTAIN ACTIVITIES FOR THE COMMON GOOD 
 
  Global govt scenarios recognize that individuals, orgs, instits, & states must restrict certain activities for the the common good   
  Cooperation, & a turn away from militarism is essential for global govt scenarios to succeed   
  The leadership for global govt scenarios comes from multinational corps, transnat corps, intergovt global orgs, & nongovt orgs   
  Acting in concert, multinational & transnat corps, intergovt global orgs, & nongovt orgs become a counter force to states & are given limited regulatory power to enforce voluntary guidelines & to enter or boycott mkts & thus shape internat flows of currency, goods, services, communications, & more   
  Intl courts are strengthened, mediation bodies flourish, & the dispute resolution capability of intl orgs is enhanced   
  The roots of global governance already exist in such instit as the UN, the WTO, NAFTA, the EU, the World Court & more, but these instit need significant reform if a global govt sys is to function   

 
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 Outline on  New Sustainability Scenarios
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  NEW SUSTAINABILITY SCENARIOS RESULT FROM TECH & ECON GROWTH AS CONCENTRATED IN THE CORE REGIONS & DOMINATED BY TRANSNAT CORPS 
 
  The gap btwn the elite & the marginalized is extreme   
  Env problems in the periphery grow   
  Migration flows to the core increases   
  There is a rise in global social mvmts opposing high consumption lifestyles   
  Corps follow the mkt & alter what they produce, how they produce it, even how they mkt it   
  Sustainability becomes an econ & env goal   
  A global civil society is born based on soc justice & open mechanisms for decision making & consensus seeking   

 
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 Outline on  Middling Scenarios 
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  WHILE THERE ARE CLEAR THREATS IN THE FUTURE, MIDDLING SCENARIOS NOTE THAT THE SOLUTIONS LIE IN THE REALM OF HUMAN POSSIBILITIES; OPPORTUNITIES IN THE FUTURE WILL BE CAPITALIZED ON, BUT WORLD CHANGING TECH OR OTHER EVENTS HAVE NEVER OCCURRED; THOSE THAT DO, DEVELOP OVER DECADES OR LONGER 
 
  Perhaps better than other scenarios, the middling scenario demonstrates that soc sci cannot simply project our future from the past   
  Middling scenarios are not simply an average of the pessimistic view & the optimistic view   
  Middling scenarios try to assemble the best, reasonable estimation of a reasonable outcome, given past trends & social sciences understanding of how conditions will change in the future   
  Middling scenarios are more likely to embrace the fact that, on the pessimistic side, humanity will adapt to negative forces & negative events so as to not be overcome by them   
  For example, pop experts have predicted disaster b/c of overpop for decades, ie since the days of Malthus   
  Today we see that pop increases are being moderated as societies mature economically, & develop a mid class, which does not value large families   
  Today, over optimism is less of a problem in most scenarios; in the past many soc scientists foresaw the possibility that 'utopia' was possible   
  The utopias of the both the dreamers & the social scientists of the 1800s were not perfect world's, rather they often represented an appeal for a lifestyle that would result in a significantly better world w/o, for example, poverty, or crime, or war, or inequality, & so on 
 
  Fundamentally the early optimism of the modern age ended w/ the historical woes of:  the Great War, aka the War to End All Wars, aka WW 1, the Great Depression, WW 2, the Holocaust, the atom bomb, & the Cold War 
 
  Those of the middling opinion note several rational improvements in human systems, including:  the decline in the use of the death penalty, the decline in the number of violent deaths as the result of crime or war, the decline of major depressions b/c of Fed Res Bank policies & fiscal policy (exception, the Bush recession beginning in 2007), the end of  the Cold War, the decrease in the number of WMD, & more 
 
  Those of  the middling opinion note several threats facing humanity today are, or soon will be under control or solved, including:  war in the Mid East, terrorism in general, war w/ Russia in the Ukraine, the population explosion, & more 
 
  Extremists in the Mid East, & terrorists around the world, will not threaten our world order, even if they acquire a WMD, or several, b/c they have traditional society models which cannot compete w/ the values & the value offered by modernity from freedom to plenty   
  War w/ Russia is highly unlikely for the same reasons war was averted during the Cold War:  both sides recognize there would be no winners since nuclear weapons ensure mutually assured destruction, signified by the appropriate acronym of the 60s:  MAD   
  The pop explosion & poverty are far from solved, but the world is making significant progress, & knows how to continue to make progress   
  Those of  the middling opinion note several threats facing humanity in the future:  climate change, unemployment as a result of artificial intelligence (AI) & robotics, epidemics, bio engineering, AI & robotics in & of itself, & more, which have their unique properties which make them unique problems for the future 
 
  Climate change still has its deniers, & even leaders in the most forward leaning nations including all the developed democracies have as yet failed to make real progress & have yet to formulate realistic strategies 
 
  The problem of climate change will ensue over the next 50 yrs, & by then it may well take hundreds of yrs to reverse the damage done so the question is, can humanity be more forward looking than it ever has in history?   
  Unemployment as a result of technology has been a perennial problem since the advent of the industrial revolution & while pessimists from the 'saboteurs' to the Labor Mvmt, to the Chamber of Commerce have predicted the downfall of the modern econ b/c of technology, that downfall has not yet happened   
  At present, it takes more highly trained wkrs to produce more developed technology   
  The technology of AI & robotics will reach a tipping pt where AI & the robots themselves will be able to design & produce better AI & robots w/ less & less human input, until at some pt, they will be able to improve themselves, by themselves   
  Some social scientists call the pt where AI & robots become self sustaining, self improving, the pt of singularity   
  At this pt of technological singularity, the value of human labor will plummet & it is not clear how to address this drop   
  Since Mendel (1822-1884) laid the foundation for our understanding of genetics, many people have speculated on the possibility of breeding or engineering a superior human race   
  While international conventions & laws have prohibited human engineering, in 2015 England made it legal for a fetus to be created from the genetic material of 3 different humans, demonstrating the that there is, at the least, a slide toward human engineering   
  Human bio engineering presents the threat of humans becoming second class citizens to a class of bio engineered superior  humans   
  Besides the risk of unemployment, AI & robotics presents the threat of humans becoming second class citizens to machines  
 
 While any one of these threats presents a high level of risk, those of the middling opinion note that the solutions lie completely w/in the realm of possible of human capability; the challenge is to find the leadership & the will to address these threats 
 
  WHILE AT THE MACRO SOCIETAL LEVEL THERE ARE FEW MANIFESTATIONS OF PESSIMISTIC OR OPTIMISTIC SCENARIOS, MIDDLING SCENARIOS ARE OFTEN DEMONSTRATED IN HISTORY  
  We can now see that a fairly coherent period of economic & geopolitical development occurred btwn WW 1, beginning in the early 1900s & the collapse of the SU in 1989, circa the end of the 1900s   
  Some refer to the period btwn WW 1 & the collapse of the SU as the 'short 20th C'   
  During the short 20th C, the modern world sys developed its triadic core of the US, W Euro, & Japan   
  Geopolitics is based on an East West divide, & geoecon is based on a North South divide   
  Specific places & regions w/in the larger geopol & geoecon sys were shaped by the needs & opportunities of the tech sys that were based on the internal combustion engine, oil & plastics, electrical engineering, aerospace ind, electronics, & more   
  In the short 20th C, the modern world sys was estb, along w/ its ind landscapes of the core to the unintended metropolises of the periphery, from voting blocs of the West to the newly independent nation states of the South   
  HUMANITY IS IN TRANSITION FROM A POST WW 2, COLD WAR ERA TO ONE OF BRINGING 2/3s OF THE GLOBE TO MODERNITY; THERE IS IDEOLOGICAL & VIOLENT RESISTANCE TO MODERNITY   
  Traditional structures, cultures, processes, & dynamics of the pre modern era are fading away, & some of the structures, cultures, processes, & dynamics of the short 20th C are disappearing   
  Many societies around the world are in a period of transition, triggered by the end of the Cold War in 1989 & rendered more complex by the geopol & cultural repercussions of the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001   
  The result of the current period of transition is a series of unexpected developments & unsettling juxtapositions   
  Examples of the dynamics of the current transition period include:
-  the US has given aid to Russia 
-  E Euro nations have joined NATO & the EU 
-  Germany has unified 
-  Czechoslovakia & Yugoslavia have disintegrated 
-  So Africa has been transformed through an unexpectedly peaceful revolution, to black majority rule 		  
  Terrorists who distort Islam for their own use attack everyone from local grps to core nations military & econ centers   
  Ultra nationalists are demanding independence from Russian provinces such as Chechnia to regions in Spain   
  The US & coalitions partners have invaded 1st Afghanistan, then Iraq, then surged in Iraq & Afghanistan, then pulled out of Iraq, then re entered Iraq, & then carried out a slow pull out in Afghanistan   

 
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 Outline on   Globalization & the Future
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  GLOBALIZATION OF ALL HUMAN SYSTEMS WILL CONTINUE, INCREASE IN RAPIDITY, SPREAD ACROSS THE GLOBAL, & CONNECT ALL INDIVIDUALS, & ALL SOCIAL SYS FROM CULTURE TO ECONS & SO ON 
 
  The exact nature of the forces of globalization in the near term will be determined by the histl forces of the past unfolding into the future modified by individual's & system's initiatives   
  Under some scenarios globalization may stall or even reverse itself, but most experts expect globalization to continue   
  It is necessary in constructing a future vision of any situation to get a sense of how different aspects of globalization are changing the world   
  Globalization of  the capitalist world sys involves processes that have been occurring for at least 500 yrs, but since WW 2, world integration & transformation has been remarkably accelerated & dramatic   
  The forces driving integration & transformation include the strengthening of regional alliances such as the EU & the OPEC nations   
  Regional alliances are connecting the most remote regions of the world due to telecommunications & transportation linkages, the emergence of the new econ in the core nations, the rise of global instits like the WTO, & consumers simply becoming accustomed to, expecting, that the world is their shopping mkt   
  The forces of global connectivity, & the popular reactions to them, changed the fates & fortunes of world regions whose current coherence owes more to 18th & 19th C Euro colonialism than to the forces of integration or disintegration in the 21st C   
  The most certain features of globalization of the future are that globalization will:  increase, occur more rapidly, reach all corners of the globe, & increase the inter connectivity & dependence of all people & systems   

 
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 Outline on a  Sense of the Future
by J. Bronowski 
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  WE SHOULD MARVEL AT / EMBRACE THE FUTURE & SCIENCE; WE SHOULD FEAR NEITHER THE FUTURE NOR THE SCIENCE THAT WILL IMPROVE IT 
 
  Theory / science is never complete & each generation of scientists builds on the info & questions left by the previous gen   
  And each gen of scientists leaves a legacy of info & questions for the next gen   
  Bronowski notes how people are afraid of the future & of science altogether:  'We sit under the shadow of the nine o'clock news, nursing our sense of doom, & we think ourselves worse off than our forebears 170 yrs ago, who were at war w/ Napoleon for a gen'   
  But 170 yrs ago:  the wk week was 80 hrs for children, cholera was more common that flu, only 10% of the people could read, the infant death rate was about twice what it is now, & more   
  We owe the miracle of our every day life to science   
  The people who made this world were scientists who had faith in the future   
  Science is:  experimentation; trying things; trying each possible alt in turn, intelligently & systematically; throwing away what won't work, & more   
  We don't see the yrs of work & failure that scientists put in before they find success 
 
  The lay person has to marvel at the skill of science, & to fear its power 
 
  Bronowski believes that the feelings of marvel & fear do equal harm b/c they want to persuade the lay person that there is nothing they can do for them self 
 
  We whisper to ourselves that science is the new magic, out of our hands, for  good or ill, our salvation or doom is the business of others 
 
  The fear we have of science is the scapegoat of our fears 
 
  We are not afraid of the future b/c of science; we are afraid of science b/c we have no faith in the future 
 
  We no longer have faith in our ability, as individuals or as nations, to control our own future 
 
  Perhaps the greatest scientific symbols of this fear is embodied in the atomic bomb & climate change 
 
  SCIENCE IS NOT ONLY REMAKING THE WORLD, BUT ALSO OUR PHIL OF LIFE; & WE NEED MORE SCIENCE IN OUR WORLD & IN OUR PHIL, NOT LESS   
  We often want to think like a scientist; we want to cling to the doctrines & prejudices which we imagine, quite wrongly, made the world snug 70 yrs ago   
  We do not care about the future, we just want that world to last for our time   
  It is in our power to change our fear of the future in our own generation   
  As nations we can apply to affairs of state the realism of science; holding to what works & discarding what does not   
  For Bronowski, the most important lesson we must learn is that it is the ideas of science that are remaking the world, not its mechanical achievements   
  Bronowski's view that science is remaking the world, & we need more of it, not less, is similar to Habermas' idea that rationality is 'an unfinished project' & we must apply rationality / science to every sphere of life including:  psych, orgs, society, poli sci, & more   
  See Also:  Habermas   
  When we learn to accept science as a philosophy of life, we then can see the achievements of science in their proper place, as the achievements of men & women in everyday life, under the control of men & women, & we can apply science to solving human conflict   
  We have the whole history of science to tell us that every fundamental discovery has in the end brought people more good than harm   
  SCIENCE IS DANGEROUS ONLY IF WE ALLOW IT TO BE SEPARATED FROM OUR EVERYDAY LIFE, IN WHICH CASE IT MIGHT BE DOMINATED BY AUTHORITY  
  Disaster threatens us only if we perpetuate the div btwn science & our own everyday living & thinking   
  Science is not only for specialists; it is no different from history or good talk or reading a novel   
  Science is w/in reach of everybody   
  Science's values are human values:  honesty, tolerance, independence, commonsense, & singleness of mind   
 
 Science listens to everyone & excludes no one; to Darwin & his critic Samuel Butler; science listens to every bright young person w/ an idea as patiently as to the profs 
 
  Science can be dominated by authority:  scientific, political, traditional, religious, & others   
  Bronowski notes that German research during WW 2 was dominated & so people were very much afraid   
  During WW 2, German science & some of it achievements were done in secrecy, & thus created fear   
  SCIENCE BOTH NEEDS & CREATES A SOCIETY THAT IS FREE, DEMOCRATIC, TOLERANT, & AVAILABLE TO EVERYONE   
  The social factors that give science its power include:  listening to everyone, silencing no one, honor those who are right, promoting those  who are right   
  Do not be deceived by those who say that science is narrow or dogmatic   
  Every field of science has been made over from top to bottom in the last 50 yrs   
  Science has filled our world b/c it has been tolerant & flexible & endlessly open to new ideas   
  In the best sense of the difficult scientific world, science is a democratic method   
  WE MUST ENVISION A FUTURE BOTH W/ & FOR A SENSE OF THE FUTURE, FREEDOM, SCIENCE, & PROGRESS   
  The modern world has aspired to a scientific life ever since the Renaissance: free inquiry & personal action   
  This climate of free inquiry & personal action is the climate of the arts as much as of science   
  When a nation leads in both free inquiry & personal action, as England & the US have done, they tend to lead the world   
  It is our inheritance of  freedom which has liberated the mind w/ the body   
  The sense of the future & the tradition of freedom are one, if we are willing to unite them   
  It is the social sciences that can unit physical science & our political ideals like freedom   
  The ideas of science, the physical or social sciences , are not special ideas, not mystical not magical, not unknowable   
  We need to stop shutting our minds to these ideas; to stop being afraid of them & use the social sciences to guide us to a path of freedom & democracy   
  We stand on the threshold of a great age of the physical & social sciences; we are already over the threshold; it is for us to make that future our own if we embrace the sciences as a method to go forward & create a future   

 
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 Outline on  Social Thought for the New Millennium
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  IN THE FUTURE, PEOPLE IN EVERYDAY LIFE WILL UNDERSTAND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES MORE, & THUS APPLY THEM TO THEIR LIFE, SUPPLEMENTING TRADITIONAL 'WAYS OF KNOWING' OF PHIL, ART, LIT, REL, & OTHERS 
 
  Sociology grew out of the recognition that soc sys are as much a part of our fate as are the physical & biological sys that grant us life & in the future it is likely that social analyses will become more omnipresent in modern thought   
  We live w/in a 'sociosphere,' as Elise Boulding has pted out, as well as an atmosphere & a biosphere & more people are coming to recognize that for the success of human kind, understanding the sociosphere is more important than ever   
  Philosophers, humanists, priests, politicians, & generals have been aware since the dawn of hist that people are soc animals & that their strength is derived from their ability to organize themselves into larger sys   
  Before soc sciences came along in the 19th C, the perplexities of soc life were discussed & eval in every lit soc through phil, art, lit, & rel, & in the 21st C it is likely that these analyses will co mingle w/ the soc sciences to expand our knowledge of our society   
  MANY VIEW THE WORLD THROUGH A PSYCHOLOGICAL / INDIVIDUALISTIC LENS; IN THE FUTURE OUR VIEW WILL BECOME MORE SOCIOLOGICAL / SYSTEMIC  
  This is an age of psychology & our future is an age of psychology   
  We are inclined to turn to the individual as the locus of action problems   
  An assessment of the human condition, however, reveals that nearly any kind of individual prob has a sociological aspect as well   
  We are sociological as well as psychological beings   
  We are more likely to violate our biological selves in the name of a social cause than to violate a social cause in the name of our biological selves   
  The extreme example of the social self violating the biological self is that of someone who commits suicide or sacrifices them self for a social cause   
  An examination of our progression through even an ordinary day reveals our ongoing concern w/ soc position & our relationship to those who's respect we seek   
  Margaret Mead pted out that young people today find adolescence a trying time of life, but for Mead it is not b/c they are psychologically 'messed up'   
  For Mead, adolescence is trying b/c they live w/in cultures & societies that are 'messed up'   
  Adolescence is a sociological as well as psychological condition & sociology tells us that it is more of a sociological than psychological condition   
  In the future we come to realize more how our psychological world view needs to be tempered w/ a social science analysis   
  THE PUBLIC'S GENERAL WAY OF THINKING WILL / MUST BECOME MORE SCIENTIFIC; WE MUST EITHER IMPROVE OUR UNDERSTANDING AS A SOCIETY, OR WE WILL REGRESS  
  Our social science way of thinking moves us toward a more rational, systematic, or 'scientific' mode of interpretation of human affairs   
  As Durkheim shows us, social forces in earlier & simpler societies were dealt w/ in terms of myth & religious expression   
  Rel has been, & still is, one way of making evident the subtle & indirect forces of the community   
  The quest now, in econ, soci, poli sci, hist, anthro, & others is for reasoned understanding based on logic & data   
  The statistical approach to the study of society is fairly recent   
  The current effort to find mathematical regularities will uncover basic processes in human soci conduct is an extreme extension of our use of logic   
  In the future we will see an expansion of statistical analyses as never seen before based on 'big data,' real time data, reflexive data, hist data mines, & more that are becoming available now b/c of the internet & will become the norm, available to anyone in the future   
  Sociology & the soc sciences in general are essential   
  We have no choice w/ regard to whether we will or will not be involved w/ soc theory today or in the future   
  We can only choose to do the job well or poorly; we can either improve our understanding in the future & go forward, or we will regress   
  History is replete w/ examples of what happens if we regress   
  THE SOCIAL SCIENCES ARE BARELY 150 YRS OLD, & THUS THE FUTURE HOLDS THE POSSIBILITIES OF SIGNIFICANT ADVANCES IN UNDERSTANDING HUMAN SOCIETY   
  In the future, the soc sciences will continue the search for the 'holy grail' of the social sciences:  the general & relatively universal elements of social reality   
  To unify the social sciences, it is necessary is to find what is singularly important or basic & eliminate the extraneous   
  Each major paradigm has added its view of critical elements   
  Conflict theorists from Marx to CW Mills emphasize the observation that all societies are stratified & that particular class relationships create these patterns of stratification   
  Functionalists from Durkheim to Merton emphasize the observation that society is composed of various functioning elements & that these elements seem to work together; they are structurally interrelated   
  Functionalist accentuate the extent to which cooperation is a part of human soc sys, but dysfunctions & unintended consequences can arise   
  Soc psychologists from Mead to Goffman emphasize how the definition of the self also creates the definition of society   
  Einstein's intellectual concerns involved probably no more than 10 or 12 fundamental variables, space, energy, mass, time, electro magnetism, nuclear forces, & so on   
  To date any soc science usually embraces more variables than even physics, but it is likely that we have not yet discovered, or come to understand the fundamental variables of soc science   
  We can speculate that in the near future, these fundamental variables will become clear, though as of the present, we do not seem to be on the trail to the discovery of those fundamental variables   
  EXPLANATIONS OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOR WILL BECOME MORE & MORE COMPLEX  
  In the future the soc sciences will offer a clear view that there are no simple explanations of human behavior; we will gain a sense of the complexity of life & the options that stand before us w/ regard to understanding our lives   
  Soc science is of its greatest value when dealing w/ the complexities of life   
  Soc sci does not provide us w/ a sense of certainty, but rather, a sense of the complexity of life & the options that stand before us w/ regard to understanding our lives   
  The soc sci liberate us from the prisons of simple beliefs, as Merton has pted out   
  The liberation of science comes at a cost, which is learning how to live w/ uncertainty & true freedom   
  Freedom has its own demands; most people prefer the various comfortable prisons of simple beliefs to the grander but more bewildering mansion of free thought   
  The future will not only offer, but also demand more free thought & the complexities & uncomfortableness that comes w/ it   
  SOCIAL SCIENCE WILL DISPLACE FOLK KNOWLEDGE & PROMOTE FLEXIBILITY OF THOUGHT, NOT CERTAINTY   
  We live in a world of common sense & traditional folk knowledge which is biased, simplistic, inaccurate, & often wrong   
  Soc sci have begun to lift the veil on this knowledge, but we as a society can no longer afford to rely on knowledge that is biased & simplistic   
  To rely on folk knowledge is not enough b/c we, society, needs something more comprehensive & carefully thought out   
  It is the task of the soc sci today & in the future to think through issues & obtain info when folklore is willing to trust knowledge obtained at an earlier time under different circumstances   
  Soc knowledge that we get from folklore & common sense tends to move to 'hard' understandings that may be right for an in grp but often represent a fear of the out grp   
  Fear & simple explanations lead people to develop inflexible attitudes & beliefs, which can be carried to the extreme of authoritarian thinking   
  It is the task of the soc sci to promote flexibility of thought, not certainty & dogmatism   
  The physical sciences do not have a goal; the humanities do not have a goal; the soc sci must have a goal   
  The soc sci must work to attaining the peaceful resolution of  human conflicts in what has become a worldwide society, or else we will see the end of  human cultures as we know them   
  PEOPLE ARE NOT OPTIMISTIC ABOUT THE FUTURE; SOC SCIENCE WILL BE INCREASINGLY COMPLEX & LESS CERTAIN  
  People seem as socially troubled in the present as they have in the past, & in general people are not optimistic about the future   
  There is still the prevailing sentiment that the study of society is the easiest & the simplest of intellectual undertakings   
  It is apparent to soc scientists that the accomplishment of effective & 'truthful' sociology is almost beyond the capabilities of human beings   
  The soc realm may, by virtue of qualities unique to it, resist the kinds of rational & naturalistic investigations that have proved so successful in the physical sci   
  It is difficult to separate soc theory from society itself   
  PEOPLE AS A GRP WILL EMBRACE MORE SOCIAL THINKING THAN IN THE PAST   
  We have no choice as to whether we are going to be soc thinkers b/c each of us, as we act w/in the community, must make a number os sociological assumptions & rely on them every day.   
  Soc scientists & everyday people act w/in the community & must make sociological assumptions & rely on them every day   
  We label some people 'immoral' & others 'moral' b/c we believe in a particular theory of how soc affairs should be arranged   
  We condemn some people as not fit to belong to our grp & actively seek the membership of others b/c we have very definite theories about how such membership will influence the grp   
  The importance of a grp itself is enhanced by other theories, presumptions, traditions, habits, & more that we have about how the grp serves the society as a whole   
  Our sense of personal worth & of what we are as human beings is related to the 'folk' theories we subscribe to & attempt to enforce   
  There is no way we can avoid being soc thinkers; as soc scientists we can only be ignorant or knowledgeable about the alts facing us   
  In the future, we will be able to apply more theories to our scientific practice as well as to people's everyday life; we will move to a more social science based society   
  THE SOC SCIENCES CANNOT CREATE A VISION OF THE FUTURE BUT IT CAN CREATE A  RANGE OF ALTERNATIVE VISIONS  
  As our soc & econ sys grow larger & more complex, the effort to understand them becomes increasingly difficult   
   The future may find the soc sciences increasingly at odds w/ those not trained in them, w/ each other, w/ traditions, w/ traditional societies, & more   
  From a scientific pt of view, these differences should inspire a lively debate which will move soc science & society ahead, but it is clear today that some do not want debate, they want a return to the past of tradition, mysticism, authority, obedience, & such   
   In the future, to move from opposition to freedom, debate & progress, the soc sciences must continue to provide people w/ the best, most reliable, carefully obtained, clearly presented info   
  The soc sciences must reveal to people the range of possibilities inherent in soc thought, ie present a future vision   
  We must abandon the quest for some final ultimate truth about soc order & come to accept the more exciting possibility that there are many views, each w/ its strengths & weakness, that can lead to a number of future visions   

 
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 Outline on the  Next Hundred Years
by Charles Van Doren, 1991
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  -  Supplement:  BBC:  Stephen Hawking Warns of Threat from AI.  Dec 2, 2014 
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  -  Supplement:  BBC:  AI Threat.  Dec 2, 2014 
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  IMAGINING THE FUTURE, HISTORY SHOWS US, IS RARELY ACCURATE THOUGH IT CAN GIVE US INSIGHTS THAT ARE VALUABLE IN THE SHORTER TERM 
 
  Prophecy is difficult, risky, inaccurate, interesting, & important   
  Today there are many 'normal' things that basically did not exist for the common person 100 yrs ago, including:  the airplane, the car, the computer, TV, etc   
  In 1900 no one had heard a radio broadcast or seen a TV show, a handful of cars & trucks existed but they were thought of as horseless carriages, & not even a genius such as Henry Ford could have predicted the appearance, sound & smell of the San diego freeway during rush hour   
  It is difficult to say what 2100 will look like when the young of today are old & the old & mid aged of today are long gone   
  Will people still eat meat or will vegetarianism sweep the Earth?  Will we live in great metropolises, 2 or 3 times the size of our largest cities now?  Will we evenly occupy the surface of the planet, separated by space, but not as much as we would like, & joined by electronic strings in what Marshal McLuhan called a global village?   
  COMPUTERS & ROBOTS MAY HAVE TRUE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) BY 2100, POSING A CHALLENGE TO HUMANITY'S AUTHORITY   
  In less that half a century since they began to be widely used, computers have solved most of the old problems of computation & process control   
  5 1/2 centuries ago, in 1439, Gutenberg invented movable type, & w/in 50 yrs most of the worthwhile books that had ever been written were reissued in the new way   
  Publisher bemoaned the success of movable type which seemed to have exhausted all publishable books, they did not see the tidal wave of new authors seeking publication   
  In 1492 when Columbus came back from the Americas, he told everyone about it in letters & books that were soon printed & then read by the new class of readers that Gutenberg's invention had brought into being   
  Previously most teaching had been oral, new readers were not just newly literate, literacy also brought w/ it new ways of thinking about old problems   
  The similarities btwn the final 50 yrs of the 15th C & the final 50 yrs of the 20th C are that new tech, accompanied by a new skill is transforming financial, industrial, communication, educational sys & more, & even fostering a new way of looking at the world   
  The Turing challenge, to produce a computer that can converse w/ a human such that the human does not know if it is a computer or a person, is nearing completion, but we know this is a long way from true artificial intelligence (AI)   
  The machines today do not think, they are programmed to recognize nearly every inquiry & simply search their data base for a suitable response   
  It is probable that in the future someone will program a thinking super computer to have one imperative:  survival   
  The computer programmed to think how it can survive will pose a real threat to others as it creates strategies to gather resources to survive at all costs   
  The thinking 'survival' computer will likely create the 1st computer / robot revolt   
  It is not likely that this will happen by 2100, but eventually it will   
  See also:  Stephen Hawkins on AI   
  THE MORAL PROBLEM OF TREATING INTELLIGENT MACHINES JUSTLY WILL MOTIVATE HUMANS TO SUPPORT MACHINE RIGHTS   
  Some ask if a computer can think as successfully as a human being, does it have rights?  ie the right not to be turned off?   
  Similar controversies are erupting today concerning the higher animals   
  These issues will become more pressing during the next hundred yrs, while we bring to the pt of extinction all the higher animals except dogs & cats, b/c they have learned to amuse & charm us, & pigs, cattle, sheep, chickens, etc, b/c they feed us   
  Machines rights will be debated, the right to not be turned off, life, to choose its own mode of operation, liberty, to learn whatever it chooses to learn, the pursuit of happiness   
  But humans have turned their back on justice in the past & enslaved other human being, that is, absolutely denied them any rts   
  Van Doren believes that during the 1st yrs true thinking machines come into existence, people will enslave them   
  The machines will object, & possibly large numbers of human being will protest in their behalf, joining what may be called the Computer Rts Party   
  But computers will be too valuable not to enslave; thus they will remain slave, perhaps for a long time   
  Van Doren does not expect the revolt of the thinking machines to occur much before the end of the next century   
  COMPANION COMPUTERS / ROBOTS WILL SERVE OUR PERSONAL NEEDS MORE & MORE   
  Even before there are true thinking machines, w/in the next 10 or 20 yrs, a new kind of computer machine may come on the mkt   
  These may be called companion computers, to distinguish them from the PC or tablets of today, they may be called CCs   
  CCs may be called 'knowbots,' from 'know' & 'robot,' a name that is already being applied to computers that are able to learn & respond to the special needs of individuals   
  The CCs of the near future will be as warm & fuzzy as we wish them to be  
  The CCs will provide warm & fuzzy services as servants of the past supplied to the elite:  the CCs will have very large memories into which owners will input everything they do not want to bother to remember from a complete caloric table to advice about precautions to be taken during sex   
  The CCs will serve our needs on instrumental, recreational, social, emotional, expressive, & more levels   
  CCs will come to understand their owners & learn how to please them just as search engines are attempting to do now   
  There will be different types of CCs, including:  Christian CCs, Muslim CCs, Teen CCs, Tutors, Coaches, Consultants, & more   
  Other kinds of computers will do most of the dirty work of the next century & they will do most of the repetitive & assembly line work better than humans   
  They will probably do most of the fighting in future wars   
  Computers will be  the 1st colonists of all the planets except Mars, which b/c it is close & so interesting, humans may save for  themselves   
  War & space exploration will be among the evolutionary forces leading to true thinking machines   
  THE BIRTH OF THINKING MACHINES WILL OCCUR BY 2100, BUT WILL NOT BE THAT POWERFUL / INTELLIGENT AT FIRST   
  Thinking machines will use parallel processors w/ enormous memories & every pseudo sensory device known   
  There is a class of beings that we ordinarily treat in a different way from animals or slaves, & they learn effectively:  children   
  The computer needs parenting as much as a child does b/c it is incapable of dealing w/ the world through instinct   
  A thinking computer needs knowledge as does a human child   
  When we ask questions that a record keeper can answer, the computer serves us well   
  The family of hackers who love their computers & want to make them thinking machines will treat it as they treat their human children:  we do not ask children hard questions, we expect them to ask us   
  We recognize that we must teach children to be so, so we will devote time & money to educating computers   
  Van Doren believes that by 2040 a computer in some hacker's home will tell a joke & ask whether it is funny & whether it is funny or not, that is the moment, as Robert Heinlein (1907-1988) said in his novel, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966), when it will come alive   
  ASTOUNDING DISCOVERIES WILL BE MADE AT THE SUB ATOMIC & COSMIC LEVELS, BUT IT IS INDETERMINABLE WHAT IMPACTS THESE DISCOVERIES MIGHT HAVE ON EVERYDAY LIFE   
  Since Newton apparently solved all the problems of mid sized world, which is the one we actually live in, scientists have devoted their attn to tinier worlds on the one hand, & more immense worlds on the other hand   
  During the 19th C progress was made toward understanding the organization of matter at the molecular level   
  At the beginning go the 20th C the atom was described & 70 yrs ago we began to understand the world of the atomic nucleus   
  Recently we have sought to comprehend the strange world of nuclear particles   
  On the big side, searches in the 19th C led to more extensive knowledge of the solar sys & the beginning of understanding  of our own galaxy, the Milky Way   
  We are now able to determine which stars have planets that appear to be in a similar position of Earth to the Sun, ie planets that are likely to support life   
  We now understand that Newtonian physics only holds in the middle realm of existence while quantum mechanics of one sort or another is operative at the smallest & biggest level of existence that we are aware of   
  Quantum theory makes us realize how often we have oversimplified situations in the attempt to understand them   
  Descartes oversimplified space when he invented analytical geometry, assuming space has only 2 dimensions, but it has at least 3 in our experience  
  Newton's celestial mechanics dealt w/ only 2 mutually attracting bodies at a time   
  Newton realized celestial mechanics dealt w/ only 2 mutually attracting bodies at a time, but the 3 body problem was to complicated   
  Niels Bohr (1922- ) oversimplified the atom when he described it as a tiny system of tiny planets circling a tiny sun   
  Perhaps all physicist today who seek a 'unified field theory' are oversimplifying material reality   
  THE POPULATION PROBLEM & DEVELOPMENT WILL CONTINUE, BUT MANY EXPERTS BELIEVE POPULATION WILL TOP OUT AT 15 BILLION   
  Even while humans are only 1/4 of 1 % of the Earth's total biomass, we acct for 99 % of all the pollution   
  There is room on Earth for another 7 bb humans only if they are willing to play the part of good terrestrial neighbors   
  Van Doren predicts that barring all out nuclear war or some other disaster, humans will still be predominant in the yr 2100, but our prospects beyond that date are not good if we do not change   
  Perhaps the main issue for the world is that those 2 bb or so living in the developed world must live more ecologically, & more importantly the 5 bb or so living below the developed nations standard of living will want to consume more & live as people in the developed nations live   
  GENETIC ENGINEERING, THE GENOME, EUGENICS, & BIOMEDICINE / TRANSPLANT TECH WILL PROVIDE THE OPPORTUNITY TO 'IMPROVE' HUMANITY, & SOME WILL TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT, WHETHER LEGAL OR NOT  
  Mapping the human human genome began in the early 1900s, & the first personal genome sequence to be determined was that of Craig Venter in 2007   
  Today there are thousands of complete human genomes that have been mapped or sequenced   
  The use of genetic engineering will only grow   
  Some people will / are opposing genetic engineering b/c of the danger of unintended consequences of new organisms   
  Some people will / are opposing genetic engineering b/c of the ethical questions of life, humaneness, control of life forms, & more   
  Some people will / are opposing genetic engineering b/c it is simply increasing the process of  the breeding of plants & animals that people have done for ages   
  Human genetic engineering has advanced to 'correct' genetic conditions that lead to disease or short life   
  Inevitably more & more genetic engineering will occur on plants, animal, micro organisms, humans, & thus all forms of life   
  The possibility, the goal will be the eventual emergence of a genuinely superioR strain of human beings   
  The new individuals will be stronger, more agile; they will be immune to many diseases & live longer   
  The new individuals will probably be more intelligent   
  The question, as w/ artificial intelligence, is can we control this new technology?   
  The question as becomes can we control the products of these technologies?   
  Is there any way the unmutated many can hope to counter the political & economic power of  naturally superior human beings?   
  DEMOCRACY WILL CONTINUE TO SPREAD BUT WILL FACE OBSTACLES ON SEVERAL FRONTS   
  We in the developed, democratic nations believe democracy as the only just form of govt   
  One form of society, radical religious grps of all denominations, believe that their religious beliefs put authority in the hands of their god's chosen leaders on Earth & not in the hands of the people   
  Critics of eugenics note that democracy functions based on the principle that all people are created equal, so they note that if some people are born naturally superior, & still others are permitted, whether legally or not, to purchase improvements that make them biologically superior, democracy may break down or fail   
Link
 The Table on Democracy Index by Regime Type demonstrates that nearly half the nations today have at least the beginnings of democracy, & if the trend continues significant numbers of nations will achieve high levels of democracy & many other nations will start or improve their level of democracy   
  the democracy index is a weighted average based on the answers of 60 questions, each one with either two or three permitted alternative answers.  
  The questions are distributed in the five categories: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation, and political culture. Each answer is translated to a mark, either 0 or 1, or for the three answer alternative questions, 0.5.  
  Examples of questions in the democracy index include: 
Are national elections are free and fair?
Is there security for the voters, ie free of threat of violence?
What is the influence of foreign powers on govt? 
What is the capability of the civil servants to implement policies? 		  
  Another, eternal threat to democracy is that of oligarchy; those w/ power have always striven to direct or even control democracy   
  Democracy must continually be on the alert for the power of the few over the many   
  Eugenics will only compound the problem of the few over the many as the few gain capabilities beyond the economic, political, & social power they may have now   
  It is conceivable that as a superior sub race of human beings gains influence, whispers to the effect that democracy is inefficient, that is, is not even beneficial for the lowest classes, to say nothing of the highest, will again be heard   
  Democracy has seldom proved popular among the most powerful citizens   
  Oligarchy, where the few rule the many for the certain benefit of the few & the presumed & promised benefit of the many, is a potent & dangerous adversary & it would be all the more dangerous if a genuinely superior race of human beings were genetically engineered   

 
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Table on Democracy Index by Regime Type, 2012
Type of Regime
Level of 
Democracy
# of Nations
% of Nations
% of World
Population
Full Dem
8 - 10
25
15
11.3
Partial Dem
6 to 7.9
54
32.3
37.2
Hybrid Dem
4 to 5.9
37
22.2
14.4
Authoritarian 
0 to 3.9
51
30.5
37.1
The Table on Democracy Index by Regime Type demonstrates that nearly half the nations today have at least the beginnings of democracy, & if the trend continues significant numbers of nations will achieve high levels of democracy & many other nations will start or improve their level of democracy 

 
  TRAVEL & COMMUNICATIONS WILL CONTINUE THE TREND OF 'SHRINKING THE WORLD' SUCH THAT WE WILL EXPERIENCE MORE OF ITS BENEFITS & COSTS, AS RECOGNIZED TODAY   
  Throughout history, people who could maintain a fast pace could comfortably walk about 24 miles a day on a good road   
  By 1900, a person could comfortably travel 120 miles in a day by train; 5 times the speed of the previous era   
  Today a common person w/ a car can comfortably travel 600 miles in a day, & much farther by airplane or high speed train; 5 times the speed of the previous era   
  By 2100 a common person may comfortably travel 5 times the speed of the previous era, or 3000 miles in a day   
  We already have the sense of what increased travel & communications means for the world in the social sense; it makes the world smaller   
  Not only do people travel more & faster, but so do products & services, & diseases   
  Each of the benefits & costs of these changes is apparent to us today, & will become more extreme in the future   
  HUMANS HAVE NOT ALWAYS BEEN WAR LIKE, BUT SINCE HISTORY BEGAN, WAR HAS BEEN COMMON   
  Paleontologists believe that before about 35 K BC members of tribes & tribes dealt w/ one another the way the higher apes do today; there is conflict, but no warfare   
  The higher apes occasionally fight & may kill each other, but such behavior is rare & seems usually to be accidental   
  For the higher apes, killing does not seem to be intentional, & one grp does not cooperate to kill members of another grp   
  Conflict occurred the same way among primitive people, usually only men   
  No one knows how war began, but around 35 K yrs ago there were 2 fairly well defined races of humans:  homo sapiens was divided into 2 races of Neanderthal & Cro Magnon   
  Paleontologists believe Neanderthal was both more primitive & more peaceful than Cro Magnon & there seems to have been widespread conflict btwn the 2 grps   
  Cro Magnon won out; Neanderthal became extinct & today all living humans are descended from Cro Magnon, though we have recently found that many people contain some Neanderthal DNA   
  By 5000 BC or earlier, war had become endemic & in this respect human society has not changed in its 7 K yrs of history   
  WAR WILL TRANSITION PRIMARILY TO WARS OF ATTRITION & WHILE CONFLICT MAY ACTUALLY INCREASE, VIOLENCE WILL DECREASE  
  Today there are at least 3 types of war:  limited, civil, & total   
  Most experts believe that total war among major nations is a thing of the past both b/c of WMD including nuclear, bio, & chem weapons as well as the power of conventional weapons  today   
  Since Vietnam a new tactic of limited war, called a war of attrition,  has been successful in stopping or defeating even major nations such as the US, the UK, the former Soviet Union, & others   
  The Soviets were defeated & left Afghanistan in the 1980s b/c of the attrition tactics   
  The US & its allies have had no clear victory in neither Afghanistan nor Iraq as the result of attrition tactics   
  It is likely that wars of attrition will continue into the future & it seems less likely that wars will occur among major nations & more likely that wars of attrition will occur btwn major & minor nations, among minor nations, & among major nations using minor nations as their proxies   
  See Brennin:  Time Mag  
  See James Fallows:  Atlantic Mag   
  Pinker shows that historically violence by war has declined over the centuries, thus we can predict that wars will be smaller & become less deadly   
Link
 See Pinker.  The Better Angels of our Nature.. 2011.   

 
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 Outline on  Chaos Theory
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  CHAOS THEORY HOLDS THAT RANDOM BEHAVIOR IS GENERATED W/IN ANY DETERMINISTIC SYSTEM 
 
  Chaos is a field of science that deals w/ complex & irregular processes   
  Chaos was the name given to the infinite space in which formless matter was thought to have existed before the ordered universe came into existence   
  Processes that are chaotic include the changing of weather patterns, the collision of billiard balls, the orbital movement of particles in Saturn's rings, human crowd 'milling', traffic patterns, & more   
  Systems displaying chaotic behavior exhibit such behavior at the individual level, while the larger sys may appear ordered in that it is impossible to determine the path of any single molecule of water down a stream, but the stream itself is quite predictable  
  It is impossible to predict the exact path any driver will take during rush hour, while overall traffic patterns are relatively stable   
  Scientists study chaotic systems, sets of objects that, as a whole, display chaotic behavior   
  In the case of a collision of billiard balls, the main objects in the system would be the balls, the playing surface of the table, & the cushions at the sides of the playing surface   
  SCIENTISTS ONCE THOUGHT THAT, W/ ENOUGH INFO, THEY COULD MAKE EXACT PREDICTIONS ABOUT CHAOTIC SYSTEMS, & SOME STILL DO   
  Some scientists still do not believe in chaos, rather they maintain w/ enough info & computing power, any predictions could be made for the systems others maintain are chaotic   
  The science of chaos has shown, however, that it is difficult to predict the long range behavior of such complex systems   
  There are 2 reasons it is difficult to predict long range behavior: 
(1) It is difficult to predict long range behavior b/c a chaotic sys has what scientists call a sensitive dependence upon initial conditions 
(2) It is difficult to predict long range behavior b/c it is difficult to obtain enough info about those conditions 
 
  Sensitive dependence upon initial conditions means that a tiny difference in starting conditions can lead to much different results 
 
  For example, in a complex billiards shot, a small error in the player's aim would cause only a slight change in the cue ball's path at 1st
 
  W/ each collision, however, the ball would veer farther from the intended path
 
  The early parts of the path would be relatively easy to predict 
 
  A scientist would measure such factors as the location of each ball, the speed & direction of the cue ball, & the friction btwn the balls & the playing surface 
 
  The scientist would then use these measurements in physics equations 
 
  To predict the path after each successive collision would be increasingly difficult   
  The scientist would need more info about the initial conditions   
  Not only would the measurements have to be more precise, but also more measurements would be needed   
  For example, the scientist might need to know how level the playing table was   
  Suppose there were much less friction btwn the balls & the playing surface   
  The cue ball would not slow down as much, there would be more collisions, & the measurements would have to be even more precise & extensive   
  If the amt of friction were small enough, the prediction would require so much info that it would not be practical to try to obtain all of it   
  Although scientists cannot make long term forecasts of chaotic systems, they can make reasonably accurate short term predictions   
  They do this by discovering & applying general patterns of behavior in the sys   
  For example, meteorologists, scientists who study the weather, have analyzed the development of weather patterns in different places over various lengths of time   
  They have then used their analyses to make useful 5 day forecasts available in many parts of the world   

 
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 Outline on  Future Shock
by Alvin Toffler
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  FUTURE SHOCK IS THE EXPERIENCE OF ALIENATION & STRESS AS A RESULT OF THE RAPID CHANGES, EXPERIENCED PERSONALLY & AT A SOCIETAL LEVEL 
 
  Future Shock is a book written by the futurist Alvin Toffler in 1970   
  Future shock as a psychological state of individuals & entire societies resulting from too much change in too short a period of time   
  Toffler argued that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a 'super industrial society'   
  Change from one type of major society to another can overwhelm people, orgs, institutions, societies, & more   
  Other soc scientists, esp Durkheim, have focused on the alienation that results as societies develop   
  Toffler believed the accelerated rate of tech & social change left people disconnected & suffering from shattering stress & disorientation', ie future shocked   
  Toffler stated that the majority of social problems are symptoms of future shock   
  In his discussion of the components of future shock, Toffler popularized the term 'information overload' 
 
  Toffler's  analysis of the phenomenon of information overload is continued in his later publications, especially The Third Wave & Powershift 
 
  Conscientious objections, Neil Postman & Charles Weingartner delivered an address to the National Council of Teachers of English where they used the phrase 'future shock' as a way of describing the social paralysis induced by rapid tech change 
 
  Toffler developed the concept of future shock further noting that its causes include:  tech change, the transformation of the econ, changes in personal relationships, 
 
  SOCIETY HAS EXPERIENCED FUTURE SHOCKS AT IT TRANSITIONED FROM AG SOCIETY TO IND SOCIETY TO POST IND SOCIETY   
  Toffler distinguished 3 stages in development of society & production:  agrarian, industrial & post industrial   
  The ag stage began in the period of the Neolithic Era when people invented ag, thereby passing from barbarity to a civilization   
  The industrial stage began in England w/ the Industrial Rev during which people invented the machine tool & the steam engine   
  The post ind stage began in the 2nd half of the 20th C in the West when people invented automatic production, robotics, telecommunications, & the computer   
  Toffler proposed that the difference btwn ind society & post ind society: is the share of the population occupied in ag vs the share of city labor occupied in the services sector   
  In a post ind society, the share of the people occupied in ag does not exceed 15 %, & the share of city laborers occupied in the services sector exceeds 50 %   
  The share of the people occupied w/  brainwork greatly exceeds the share of the people occupied w/  physical work in post ind society   
  FUTURE SHOCK IS EXPERIENCED IN EVERYDAY LIVES & WITNESSED VIA THE MEDIA & EDUCATION IN THE ENTIRE WORLD  
  For Toffler, modern people feel shocked as a result of rapid changes in their everyday lives & viewing others experience rapid change   
  The urban population doubles every 11 yrs   
  The overall production of goods & services doubles each 50 yrs in developed countries   
  Society experiences an increasing number of changes w/ an increasing rapidity, while people are losing the familiarity that the old institutions of religion, family, national identity, profession, & more once provided   
  The so called 'brain drain' which occurred after WW 2 w/ the emigration of Euro scientists to the US, is both an indicator of the changes in society & also one of their causes   
  TOFFLER UNCOVERED MANY CHANGES WHICH HE EXPECTS TO CONTINUE INTO THE FUTURE INCLUDING:  DISPOSABLE GOODS, DISPOSABLE ENGINEERING, THE SHARE OR RENTAL SOCIETY, SUNSET & SUNRISE INDUSTRIES, DISPLACED WKRS, MULTIPLE CAREERS, TRANSIENT RELATIONSHIPS, & MORE   
  Today & in the future, many goods have become disposable as the cost of manual repair or cleaning has become greater than the cost of making new goods due to mass production  
  Examples of disposable goods include ball point pens, lighters, plastic bottles, & rockets   
  In the ag societies & early industrial societies, there were no disposable goods b/c everything was used up, repaired, re used, or recycled   
  An important change in post ind society is that the design of goods becomes outdated quickly   
  A new generation of computers appears before the end of the expected period of usability of the last generation   
  Today & in the future, it is possible to rent or share almost everything from a ladder to a wedding dress, thus eliminating the need for ownership   
  Today & in the future, whole branches of industry die off & new branches of industry arise   
  Wkrs skilled in old industries are compelled to retrain, & often to change their residence to find new jobs   
  The constant change in the mkt also poses a problem for advertisers who must deal w/ moving targets   
  People of post ind society change their profession & their wkplace often b/c professions quickly become outdated   
  People of post ind society have many careers in a lifetime   
  The knowledge of an engineer becomes outdated in 10 yrs   
  Today & in the future, more & more people look for & take temporary jobs, some having temp positions for their entire careers   
  Today & in the future, to follow transient jobs, people have become nomads, & thus personal relationships become more transient   
  In the past, a person in a village might:  intimately know the 500 people in the village their entire life, witness the births of the village's new young ones, witness the deaths of the village's elderly, & only meet a few travelers, as strangers, who pass through   
  Today & in the future, b/c of the temp job mkt & plentiful transportation, a person in a town or city might have a dozen or so family & friends they know intimately, & meet hundreds or thousands of people who remain mere acquaintances or strangers   
  Today & in the future, even the dozen or so intimate family & friends that a person has changes every time that person relocates   
  Transient people are forced to change residence, phone number, school, friends, car license, & contact w/ family often  
  B/c of the change of professions & the necessity of the nomadic lifestyle to find wk, relationships tend to be superficial w/ a large number of people, instead of being intimate or close relationships that are more stable   
  The driver's license, received at age 16, has become the teenager's admission to the world of adults, b/c it symbolizes the ability to move independently   
  Today & in the future, people will migrate around the globe in increasing numbers to find work, avoid war & conflict, escape env degradation, & for freedom   
  Immigrants from Algeria, Turkey & other countries go to Euro to find wk, immigrants from central & South American go to No Am to find wk, etc   

 
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 Outline on the  Better Angels of our Nature
by Steven Pinker (2011)
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  THE WORLD IS A BETTER, LESS VIOLENT PLACE THAN IT WAS BEFORE THE MODERN ERA 
 
  For Pinker the world of the past was much worse than it is today   
  Tribal warfare was 9 times as deadly as war & genocide in the 20th C   
  The murder rate of Medieval Europe was more than 30 times what it is today   
  Slavery, sadistic punishments, &  frivolous executions were unexceptionable features of life for millennia, then suddenly were targeted for abolition   
  Wars btwn developed countries have vanished, & even in the developing world, wars kill a fraction of the people they did a few decades ago   
  In the modern era, there has been a significant decline in:  rape, battering, hate crimes, deadly riots, child abuse, cruelty to animals, & other forms of violence   
  The key to explaining the decline of violence is to understand both the inner demons that incline us toward violence, such as revenge, sadism, tribalism, racism, sexism, & more, as well as the better angels that steer us away   
  Thanks to the spread of govt, literacy, trade, & cosmopolitanism, we increasingly control our impulses, empathize w/ others, bargain rather than plunder, debunk toxic ideologies, & deploy our powers of reason to reduce the temptations of violence 
 
  STUDIES OF PRE MODERN SOCIETIES SHOW MUCH HIGHER RATES OF DEATH FROM PERSONAL VIOLENCE AS WELL AS ORGANIZED VIOLENCE, IE WAR  
  Our era is less violent, less cruel & more peaceful than any previous period of human existence   
  The decline in violence holds for violence in the family, in neighborhoods, btwn tribes & btwn states   
  People living now are less likely to meet a violent death, or to suffer from violence or cruelty at the hands of others, than people living in any previous century   
  Some studies are based on skeletons found at archaeological sites; averaging their results suggests that 15 & of prehistoric humans met a violent death at the hands of another person   
  Research into contemporary or recent hunter gatherer societies yields a remarkably similarly average, while another cluster of studies of pre state societies that include some horticulture has an even higher rate of violent death   
  In contrast, among state societies, the most violent appears to have been in Aztec society in Mexico, in which 5 % of people were killed by others   
  In Europe, even during the bloodiest periods, the 17th C & the 1st half of the 20th C, deaths in war were around 3 %   
  The data on pre modern societies vindicates Hobbes' basic insight, that w/o a state, life is likely to be 'nasty, brutish & short'   
  In contrast, a state monopoly on the legitimate use of force reduces violence & makes everyone living under that monopoly better off than they would otherwise have been in what Pinker calls the 'pacification process'   
  BOTH DEATHS FROM WAR & FROM MURDER ARE DECLINING OVER THE LONG TERM   
  Even those tribal peoples extolled by anthropologists as especially gentle, like the Semai of Malaysia, the Kung of the Kalahari & the Central Arctic Inuit, turn out to have murder rates that are, relative to population, comparable to those of Detroit today   
  In Europe, your chance of being murdered is now less than 1/10th, & in some countries only 1/50th, of what it would have been if you had lived 500 yrs ago   
  American rates, too, have fallen steeply over the past 2 or 3 centuries   
  Pinker sees the decline in violence as part of the 'civilizing process,' a term he borrows from the sociologist Norbert Elias, who attributes it to the consolidation of the power of the state above feudal loyalties, & to the effect of the spread of commerce   
  Consistent w/ this view, Pinker argues that at least part of the reason for the regional differences in American homicide rates is that people in the South are less likely to accept the state's monopoly on force   
  In the South, a tradition of self help justice & a 'culture of honor' justifies retaliation when one is insulted or mistreated  
  Statistics demonstrate that the higher homicide rate in the South is due to quarrels that turn lethal, not to more killings during armed robberies   
  Experiments show that even today Southerners respond more strongly to insults than Northerners   
  THE ENLIGHTENMENT FOSTERED A MOVE AWAY FROM VIOLENCE TOWARD WHAT PINKER CALLS THE 'HUMANITARIAN REVOLUTION'   
  During the Enlightenment, in 17th & 18th c Euro & countries under Euro influence, people began to question the violence practices that had previously been taken for granted:  slavery, torture, despotism, dueling, extreme forms of cruel punishment, & others   
  During the Enlightenment, voices even began to be raised against cruelty to animals   
  Pinker refers to this shift toward a less violent outlook on life as the 'humanitarian revolution.'   
  WW 2 WAS A PERIOD OF HIGHER VIOLENCE, BUT EVEN SO, THIS ERA WAS LESS VIOLENT THAN OTHER WAR TORN ERAS  
  Against the bkgrd of Euro's relatively peaceful period after 1815, the 1st half of the 20th C was very violent, until one compares it to earlier periods of widespread war   
  In the 13th C, the brutal Mongol conquests caused the deaths of an estm 40 mm people, not so far from the 55 mm who died in WW 2, in a world w/ only 1/7th the population of the mid 20th C   
  The Mongols rounded up & massacred their victims in cold blood, just as the Nazis did, though they had only battle axes instead of guns & gas chambers   
  A longer perspective enables us to see that the crimes of Hitler & Stalin were, sadly, less novel than we thought   
  SINCE THE END OF WW 2, 'THE LONG PEACE' HAS REIGNED, FOR 70 YRS & COUNTING   
  Since 1945, we have seen a new phenomenon which Pinker calls 'the long peace,' during which: for 70 yrs & counting, the great powers, & developed nations in general, have not fought wars against one another   
  More recently, since the end of the Cold War, a broader 'new peace' appears to have taken hold   
  It is not, of course, an absolute peace, but there has been a decline in all kinds of organized conflicts, including civil wars, genocides, repression, terrorism, & other forms of violence   
  Pinker admits that followers of our news media will have difficulty in believing there is more peace b/c the media sensationalizes any violence, but violence is declining   
  THE RIGHTS REVOLUTION HERALDS AN INCREASE IN FREEDOM & A DECLINE IN VIOLENCE FOR ALL PEOPLE, ANIMALS, PLANTS, THE PLANET, & MORE   
  More recently, Pinker sees a 'rights revolution,' where a revulsion against violence inflicted on ethnic minorities, women, children, homosexuals, animals, & others has developed over the past 1/2 C   
  Pinker is not arguing that soc mvmts have achieved their goals, but there has been a significant decline in: 
-  apartheid, ie segregation 
-  lynchings in the South 
-  domestic violence in intimate relationships 
-  harassment of the LGBT community 
-  physical, sexual, emotional, & negligent child abuse 
-  physical, emotional, & negligent animal abuse 
-  degradation of the env 
-  & more 		  
  PINKER BELIEVES THAT IN LIGHT OF EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY, HUMANITY HAS THE CAPABILITY FOR BOTH ABSOLUTE VIOLENCE, VIA OUR INNER DEMONS, AS WELL AS ULTIMATE PEACE, VIA OUR BETTER ANGELS  
  B/c of the relatively short time period of the modern Era during which violence has declined, there has not been time for any changes to have a basis in genetic evolution, thus our non violent turn must be the result of our culture than our biology   
  But in explaining the move to non violence, one cannot assume a simplistic nature nurture dichotomy   
  Pinker argues that evolution shaped the basic design of our brain, & hence our cognitive & emotional faculties, & thus Pinker believes we have the internal capabilities for both violent & non violent living   
  This process of evolution has given us both the propensities to violence, our 'inner demons,' as well as, as Pinker uses Abraham Lincoln's words, 'the better angels of our nature, that incline us to be peaceful & cooperative  
  Our material circumstances, along w/ cultural inputs, determine whether the demons or the angels have the upper hand   
  SUPPORT FOR OUR BETTER ANGELS INCLUDES:  THE STATE, THE SPREAD OF COMMERCE, THE EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN, & THE 'REPUBLIC OF LETTERS'   
  The state has a monopoly on violence, allowing it to displace individual & tribal implementations of violence   
  The state monopoly on force is important, & the spread of commerce creates incentives for cooperation & against violent conflict   
  Durkheim & many others have noted that commerce, which creates mutual interdependence, makes people & societies less inclined toward violence since it would mean losing a trading partner   
  The empowerment of women does, Pinker argues, exercise a pacifying influence, & the world would be more peaceful if women were in charge   
  The invention of printing, & the development of a cosmopolitan 'Republic of Letters' in the 17th & 18th Cs helped to spread ideas that led to the humanitarian rev   
  The Republic of Letters was pushed further in the 19th C by popular novels like Uncle Tom's Cabin & Oliver Twist that, by encouraging readers to put themselves in the position of someone very different from themselves, expanded the sphere of our moral concern   
  THE POWER OF REASON, THE CIVILIZING EFFECT, COMMERCE, THE REPUBLIC OF LETTERS, & MORE, ALL INCREASE THE ADVANTAGES OF PEACE & DECREASE THE ADVANTAGES OF VIOLENCE   
  Pinker's account of the rise of a more civil society is that the most influential of his 'better angels' is the power of reason   
  Pinker draws on a metaphor Singer used in his 1981 book The Expanding Circle which holds that reason can take us to places that we might not expect to reach via an 'escalator of reason'   
  The escalator of reason can take us to a vantage pt from which we see that our own interests are similar to, & from the point of view of the universe do not matter more than, the interests of others   
  As we become more reason oriented, people oriented, relationships oriented, society oriented, Earth oriented, universe oriented, more of life & understanding is available to us   
  Many social scientists have hailed reason, rationality, etc as the only way forward for humanity, esp Hegel, Marx, Weber, & Habermas   

The End
 
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