Long Now Paul Saffo: Embracing Uncertainty: the secret to effective forecasting
Jan 12, 2008
Paul Saffo, a forecaster and technology historian known for mapping long-term tech change, offers a playful take on uncertainty. He talks about the cone of uncertainty, wild cards and science fiction as idea seeds. He explains S-curves, looks for odd indicators like Roomba behavior, and recounts the DARPA robot car inflection that signaled rapid change.
01:25:32
Map The Cone Of Uncertainty
- Forecasting maps a widening "cone of uncertainty" rather than predicting a single outcome.
- Embracing that expanding uncertainty turns surprises into opportunities.
Use Wild Cards To Test Edges
- Treat wild cards as legitimate probes to test the edges of plausibility.
- Use wild cards to sensitize yourself to surprises and broaden your forecast edges.
Expect S‑Curve Timing, Not Linear Change
- Meaningful change follows S-curves, not straight lines, so arrival is often late then rapid.
- We overestimate near-term change and underestimate long-term transformation.
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Intro
00:00 • 2min
Forecasting as Mapping a Cone of Uncertainty
02:11 • 4min
Wild Cards and Sensitizing to Surprise
05:54 • 11min
S-Curves: Late Starts and Long-Term Takeoff
16:30 • 2min
DARPA Grand Challenge as an Inflection Indicator
18:25 • 6min
Look for Indicators and Prodromes
24:04 • 3min
Roomba Owners Reveal Robotic Adoption Signals
26:50 • 2min
Robots vs. Human Driving: A Powerful Contrast
28:49 • 3min
Decadal Enabling Technologies: Process, Communication, Interaction
32:13 • 4min
Sensors, Machines and the Next Web
35:53 • 3min
Cherish Failure and Build on Long Failing Fields
38:24 • 2min
Be Indifferent: Separate Desire from Likely Outcomes
40:39 • 4min
Assume You're Wrong and Forecast Often
44:40 • 55sec
Historic Navigation Failure Illustrates Hedging Error
45:35 • 7min
Embrace Uncertainty: Final Forecasting Advice
52:32 • 1min
Audience Q&A: Climate Change Stance
53:35 • 5min
How Saffo Collects Indicators
58:21 • 3min
Persuasion, Cassandra and Communicating Forecasts
01:00:57 • 3min
Disagreement and Interpreting a Broad Cone
01:03:38 • 24sec
Estimating S-Curve Steepness Remains Hard
01:04:02 • 1min
Y2K: Self-Canceling Forecasts and CIO Challenges
01:05:32 • 3min
Forecasting's Future: Machines as Conversational Partners
01:08:20 • 3min
Nation-States, City-States, and Political Decentralization
01:11:00 • 7min
When Cones Narrow or Widen: Historical Markers
01:17:38 • 1min
Acceleration, Interacting S-Curves, and Turtles Metaphor
01:19:01 • 4min
Autocatalytic Technologies and Limits
01:23:16 • 2min
Outro
01:25:00 • 2sec
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### Rules of Forecasting
Reflecting on his 25 years as a forecaster, Paul Saffo pointed out that a forecaster's job is not to predict outcomes, but to map the "cone of uncertainty" on a subject. Where are the edges of what might happen? (Uncertainty is cone-shaped because it expands as you project further into the future-- next decade has more surprises in store than next week.)
Rule: Wild cards sensitize us to surprise, and they push the edges of the cone out further. You can call weird imaginings a wild card and not be ridiculed. Science fiction is brilliant at this, and often predictive, because it plants idea bombs in teenagers, which they make real 15 years later.
Rule: Change is never linear. Our expectations are linear, but new technologies come in "S" curves, so we routinely overestimate short-term change and underestimate long-term change. "Never mistake a clear view for a short distance."
"Inflection points are tiptoeing past us all the time." He saw one at the DARPA Grand Challenge race for robot cars in the Mojave Desert in 2004 and 2005. In 2004 no cars finished the race, and only four got off the starting line. In 2005, all 23 cars started and five finished.
Rule: Look for indicators- things that don't fit. At the same time the robot cars were triumphing in the desert, 108 human-driven cars piled into one another in the fog on a nearby freeway. A survey of owners of Roomba robot vacuum cleaners showed that 2/3 of owners give the machine a personal name, and 1/3 take it with them on vacations.
Rule: Look back twice as far. Every decade lately there's a new technology that sets the landscape. In the 1980s, microprocessors made a processing decade that culminated in personal computers. In the 1990s it was the laser that made for communication bandwidth and an access decade culminating in the World Wide Web. In the 2000s cheap sensors are making an interaction decade culminating in a robot takeoff. The Web will soon be made largely of machines communicating with each other.
Rule: Cherish failure. Preferably other people's. We fail our way into the future. Silicon Valley is brilliant at this. Since new technologies take 20 years to have an overnight success, for an easy win look for a field that has been failing for 20 years and build on that.
Rule: Be indifferent. Don't confuse the desired with the likely. Christian end-time enthusiasts have been wrong for 2,000 years.
Rule: Assume you are wrong. And forecast often.
Rule: Embrace uncertainty.
Saffo ended with a photo he took of a jar by the cash register in a coffee shop in San Francisco. The handwritten note on the jar read, "If you fear change, leave it in here."
PS… You can find different rules and a more strait-laced presentation by Saffo in his Harvard Business Review article, "_Six Rules for Effective Forecasting_ ," [here](http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp?ml_action=get-article&articleID=R0707K&ml_issueid=BR0707&ml_subscriber=true&pageNumber=1&_requestid=37598).