by The Sunday NY Times had a piece “Playing Dumb on Climate Change” that reminded me of the challenges of balancing credibility and provocation. Add in a wonderful APF listserv discussion on wildcards, probability, and the like, and it’s time to blog!
The author of the Times piece, Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard professor of the History of Science, suggests that scientists “ought to be more emphatic about the risk [of climate change].” She noted how “science is conservative, and new claims of knowledge are greeted with high degrees of skepticism.” [We futurists might re-word that a bit and suggest that our work is often greeted with skepticism.] The piece goes on to puncture a hole in the “95% confidence level” that is often invoked to keep more speculative work from being considered. In a nutshell, she argues that this high bar of confidence can get in the way of common sense/human judgment. And so with climate change, she’s saying we have enough evidence to suggest a connection between human activity and climate change and shouldn’t keep quiet about it – in effect, playing dumb – due to not meeting an impractically high burden of proof.
Futurists continually face the challenge of making a case for clients to pay attention to something with little in the way of proof, but providing evidence, highlighting assumptions, and crafting a logical plot/story from that. And of course there are variations within that general “light” burden of proof. Trends exist in the present and one can point to tangible evidence there. Projecting trends into a baseline future is more speculative; alternative futures are more speculative than the baseline; and wildcards yet more speculative than all.
I suggest to students when setting up a project with clients to ask or insinuate where clients are in terms of a credible-provocative continuum (we might come up with better terms for that, but hopefully you get the idea). Think of it more as a sliding scale than an either-or. Do they seem to want “safer” or “stretch” futures? Not that we then have to pander to that, but we ought to have a sense of the lay of the land so we can develop and position our findings accordingly. Many years ago we suggested a “pet bedroom” to a client who it turned out wanted “safer” futures. Fortunately, we had some of those, but a few of us were crestfallen that the client didn’t see the breakthrough idea of the pet bedroom, and it probably cost us some credibility points. There are always tradeoffs and balancing acts, part of the art of foresight. Andy Hines
Thanks Andy! We describe that “sliding scale” as the Push/Pull of the future, with one end connected more to present trends and the other to transformational ideas. Of course, beyond a surface evaluation or “sell” of the provocative or breakthrough ideas themselves, exposing clients to that end of the scale helps them see the connection across the spectrum of Push/Pull to unfolding narratives and landscapes, indicators of change, pathways of disruption, etc. In other words, both ends of the spectrum (credible/provocative) impact one another rather than being mutually exclusive. The “safe” needs “stretch” in order to have future impact and move people past official futures or linear biases, and stretch needs safe in order to be relevant and impactful to client industries or social issues (and meeting a group “where they are” so that they can begin a more profound and positive future learning journey). Learning the client language and environment before engaging is vital to success (and credibility), and then we will know how to best apply the entire sliding spectrum. I’m preaching to the choir here, but a great conversation for reframing and updating foresight for 21st Century models of thinking and seeing in a complex and integrated world.
Thank you both, Mr. Hines and Mr. Spencer for an interesting and informative discussion.