Robert Lempert, RAND | On the How & Why of Worldbuilding | Xhope Worldbuilding Course
May 10, 2024
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Robert Lempert from RAND discusses worldbuilding and existential hope on a podcast. He explores creating vivid future scenarios, immersive worldbuilding, backcasting for desired futures, and visual storytelling. The discussion delves into policy analysis, creating multiple worlds with different technology configurations, and the role of worldbuilding in improving preparedness and decision-making under uncertainty.
Accurate future planning is crucial during societal shifts like climate change and tech advancements.
World building helps craft detailed future scenarios by starting with 'what if' propositions.
Deep dives
Challenges in Envisioning Futures
Envisioning futures that go beyond reflecting present concerns is difficult and often leads to projections that are reflections of current issues. For instance, historical projections about the future of the US from 100 years ago show a mix of accurate predictions and wildly incorrect visions, reflecting the challenge of foresight. This highlights the critical need for accurate future planning, especially in times of significant societal shifts like climate change and technology advancements.
World Building for Future Understanding
World building offers a method to address the uncertainty surrounding future scenarios by creating detailed, coherent descriptions of potential worlds. By shifting focus from storytelling to contextual development, world building helps to craft immersive and detailed future scenarios. Drawing on examples from literature and films like 'Minority Report,' the process involves starting with 'what if' propositions and expanding them across various domains to ensure coherence.
Application of Backcasting in Future Workshops
The integration of backcasting in world building workshops enhances the understanding of paths towards desirable future scenarios. By starting with a future world vision and working backward to the present, participants can break free from current constraints and explore innovative paths. By creating speculative scenarios and detailed logic points, individuals in these workshops can develop robust strategies adaptable to a range of potential future worlds. Additionally, incorporating persona development and domain exploration enriches the envisioning process and fosters diverse perspectives.
Robert Lempert (Ph.D., Applied Physics, Harvard University) is a senior physical scientist at RAND. He is the director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for Longer Range Global Policy and the Future Human Condition, a principal researcher at RAND, and a professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. His research focuses on risk management and decision-making under conditions of deep uncertainty. Lempert's work aims to advance the state of art for organizations managing risk in today's conditions of fast-paced, transformative, and surprising change and help organizations adopt these approaches to help make proper stewardship of the future more commonly practised.
Worldbuilding Course
This session is a part of THE WORLDBUILDING CHALLENGE: CO-CREATING THE WORLD OF 2045. In this virtual and interactive course, we engage with the most pressing global challenges of our age—climate change, the risks of AI, and the complex ethical questions arising in the wake of new technologies. Our aim is to sharpen participants’ awareness and equip them to apply their skills to these significant and urgent issues.
Existential Hope
Existential Hope was created to collect positive and possible scenarios for the future so that we can have more people commit to creating a brighter future, and to begin mapping out the main developments and challenges that need to be navigated to reach it. Existential Hope is a Foresight Institute project.