The Predicting Paradox
In 2018, Greta Thunberg was rising to fame as the only person trying to make some actual changes to the rise of global warming of this planet. She said repeatedly that we had likely 5 more years to run the planet the way we are, or we'll be on the verge of real chaos due to climate change.
Trump at that time was president, being a leader, took on Greta Thunberg in an online battle and sadly lost, because being a human he could not be good at everything. The cost of his loss fortunately did not amount to any real economic or industry change for the USA.
Today, in June of 2023. We are using petrol and gas products, engines, and industries running the way they were 5 years ago. Economic growth is on the rise. This isn't about the belittling of Greta Thunberg, it's about the ability of us humans to see the change and chaos coming and our ability to divert or minimize the damage.
Taking the above example, we can sure see plastic being banned and electric vehicle industries seeing significant investment in their products. Solar panel costs have been cut, scientists were able to extract CO2 out of thin air, and wind turbines were laid in the ocean where they could benefit from the storms to create more renewable energy.
The point is that if humans could see an asteroid coming towards Earth, sure half the planet would give up hope of being alive and surrender. But the powerful/resourceful part of mankind would work out a solution against a common enemy.
Humans are bad at spotting the elephant in the room until it's too late but extremely efficient at performing under pressure when all hands come together.
Take the ozone layer crisis for example, one of the few instances where humans have come together and worked out a solution to a crisis that has actually worked. The Montreal Protocol demonstrated the Predicting Paradox where in seeing a problem becoming serious, humans avoided the expulsion of CFCs in the atmosphere and avoided the depletion of the ozone layer.
This Paradox must be kept in mind when talking about AI and other innovations in the future. People take about AI being able to develop a hivemind and destroy or hurt humanity in ways we can not imagine. Well, do the countless movies on AI and robots not portray the same thing that we've been imagining as children and wanting to do as adults.
The recent submarine tragedy should be something that is to be learned from. There were no active warnings or threats that could've prepared us from knowing that a submarine "implodes" if taken below a particular depth.
Bad things that are predicted do not tend to happen, whereas bad things that cannot be predicted are most likely to.













