Predicting The Future

 Nobody knew that ... is the favorite excuse for the ignorant.

As science developed better and better tools for prediction have been developed. we can only see how weather predictions have improved over the last years. There are of course many events that until now have avoided predictability, one, of course, is earthquakes. Let us be clear if someone says that there is going to be an earthquake next week, s/he will be right because there are always earthquakes around the world so in this case predictability requires more information. In order to predict an earthquake we must say where, when, and how strong. 

Thus we see a dichotomy with short term, narrow predictions, and long term complex phenomena. Engineering has been an excellent tool for "short term" analysis and predictions, so we can get in our car and drive worry less knowing how much gas we have and the information that our car is running without the check engine light. With other areas like accounting, we can do similar things. We can predict how long will it take for our bank account to be in the black taking by knowing how much money it has now and what the rate of expenses is. Predictability is possible when we know all the factors involved.

The development of the internet in the 90s brought many uncharted situations that have changed the way we live. Now at this moment, I am typing to a "cloud" that would be unthinkable a few years ago. Typing with type correcting assistant and spelling check making things easier in many ways. In the 70s a film featuring, at the time well-know actors  Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson, tried to predict the future. The movie "Soilent Green" hit the screens in 1973 telling the "story" of New York in 2022. If you watch the movie, some predictions based on human nature, like greed and income inequality were accurate, but the technological predictions were completely out of the target. There are self-fulfilling prophecies and prophecies that produce the opposite outcome. In the movie, it was predicted that by 2022 New York City will have more than 40 million inhabitants, so what happened with this prediction? The well thought prediction was based on the statistical trend of growth of the city based on how many people were, in the 70s, moving to NYC. One pausable explanation is that as people saw the movie and more and more people were getting conscious about the environment and city population growth they decided not to move to NY. The 70s was a decade of environmental awakening, some would say started by authors like Rachel Carson and his book "Silent Spring" when many laws passed the US congress protecting the environment like the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) signed into law by a Republican president, Richard Nixon.

As we increase the number and the degree and uncertainty of factors in a process or phenomena the statical chance that we would be able to predict diminishes. That has been the case with predicting the weather. One important factor in our knowledge of a situation or phenomenon is its historical background. Weather predictions were in the past mainly based on historical information about the climate which is the average over years of the weather in a place. Climate seasons are statistical representations of historical data. 

Today in 2020 we are witnessing forest fires on the west coast of the USA, fires that have no recent parallel.  So people are saying nobody knew that this could happen. But, of course, environmentalists have been, for many years, warning about climate change and its effects on wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, tornados, floods, and other natural phenomena that transform into human-made disasters. 

Many with knowledge started to warn us about the possibility of a worldwide pandemic several years ago. Bill Gates had a Ted Talk in 2015 (click here for the talk), and Fareed Zakaria in his GPS program (June 25, 2017) on CNN dedicated a segment to criticize the reduction on the CDC budget by the Trump administration by pointing out that a pandemic likely and we needed to be prepared. Not believing in science has dire consequences, and having leaders with power in our society that are ignorant is dangerous and catastrophic. 

The question remains about how can we predict the future and what does it mean to predict the future. There are, for sure, many events, like earthquakes, that can't be predicted but nevertheless, we can prepare just in case. We can have earthquake-resistant buildings, dams, bridges, and general infrastructure but we have to pay the price.    

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Dream A Little Dream

Pink Martini is my favorite contemporary music group. And one of their latestest albums is "Dream A Little Dream" (Pink Martini & The Von Trapps). What a coincidence that now

I am thinking about dreams, my favorite group comes with an album titled like this! I need to spend a little time thinking about coincidences as they relate to the timing in which this events happen and try to see if there is something more than a mere statistical probability for these coincidences.

In our Quaker meeting our Pastor some time ago talked about Genesis 28:10-22 Jacob's Dream at Bethel. In verse 12 "He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it" (NIV.) In verses 18 &; 19: "Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. 19 He called that place Bethel. Before in verse 17 the interpretation for the dream his dream was about the house of God and that this place in which Jacob was sleeping was the gate to heaven.

Jacob followed a dream to name a city, a place that became important in the lives of his people. Many other dreams have become realities that have transformed our society, from the idea of having a standardized oil to burn in our lamps (John D. Rockefeller's dream Standard Oil or any of the huge and now transnational corporations started as a dream of one individual. Or the dream of a few that created the idea of a nation that would be free and democratic, a nation that wouldn't have a name but an ideal. The ideal of a United States of America.

There have been events over the last months that have many people thinking about their dreams as an uncertain future is developed. Brexit in the UK and the elections in the USA have proven that the future is always unexpected. So how can we plan to accomplish our dreams. What kind of foundation can we build so we have a solid ground to base our dreams. What ideals should we have to help us navigate an uncertain future that becomes present every single moment that we live. When I started writing this post a while ago, I had no idea of the chaos a #DelusionalPresident would bring, now we still don't know even though we have seen incredible corruption in the new administration.

What are the limits of our dreams? What effect can one have on our surroundings as we follow our dreams?

Listening

It has taken more time than expected. Writing about time is weird. Times is unforgiving.

Winter 2015-2016 has been a time to listen. Listen to my inside and listening to the outside.
No way for me to articulate how this two are connected or disconnected. Maybe they are connected and disconnected. Influenced my Tolle I think I am using this time of 'home-bound' due to a freezing inclemency to ponder about, and meditate on what is coming this 2016. Reading Matthew Hutson's "The Seven Laws of Magical Thinking" induces me to think about perceptions based on superstitions. If we had a great year then we must change luck and have a bad year. Or not! (touch wood!)

Listening to what people say through prejudice, superstition, 'common sense', or true wisdom is part of who we are, not only the activity of listen but the fact that we incorporate such ideas into our own. We make them part of who we are. Listening intentionally to those who we respect and trust becomes the leading activity of a good life, conducing us to share with those around us about what we learned and lived.

     This year I will listen more carefully to what life has to say!

Dream Planning

     A few days ago I mentioned the steps one must take in order to be a good teacher, I mentioned them without giving any explanation or details about them. The steps are: 

1. Planning
2. Listening
3. Communicating
4. Actualizing
5. Opening

So in this post I will try to expand on the first step: Planning.

     It would sound redundant to say that one must plan if one is to achieve anything, but looking closely it is clear that there are many questions related to the planning process and the actions needed for an efficient plan. Not only the things we are supposed to do have to be included but the timing on which they occur and this is the most difficult aspect to plan. Timing. 

     In the book Breakthrough, 

Roger Seip tell us how it is important to have time for ourselves, time that has to be taken out of the business of our lives so we can focus on what is really important and not what appears to be urgent distracting us from achieving our dreams. Seip recommends at least 15 minutes every day to meditate on our goals, a weekly encounter with ourselves, and a quarterly day when we should spend the whole day thinking about what happened in the las three months and what we would like to happen in the next three months. 
Summarizing, we need time for ourselves:
a. Daily (15 - 30 minutes)
b. Weekly (1 - 2 hours)
c. Quarterly (1 day)

     In preparation for our teaching for each lesson plan we must have time open for discussion and time to ponder about the concepts in class, as we review those ideas that have been just introduced we have to remember those that have been introduced and used before. Repetition is time consuming and has to be part of the teaching plan. Therefore the teacher has to make the students aware that as there is a teaching time there is a learning time. For the learning process there must be a plan too, this plan of course should include repetition as part of the learning time.

    On a future blog I will continue talking about Listening but for now it is clear that listening need some space too, some space-time. How can we create this space-time? 

One Never Stop Dreaming

Even though I haven't written about my dreams, I have been dreaming. Dreaming about what is coming next, immediately and on the long run. At 66 I am confronted with situations that make me wonder about the long run. A few days ago we went to visit our daughter so we could spend "Mother's Day" with her. On Sunday we went to a nursery near Everett where my daughter lives called "Flower World" it is a very nice place! It is huge and have lots of plants for sale, one in particular we were happy to find: A fig tree. A black fig tree. My wife goes crazy for black figs, see loves them and when ever we can find them at the grocery store we buy plenty of them. I think she can eat a pound by herself in a single time. Well I am exaggerating here because I think she will take it slow so her figs will last longer. But I think she can eat a full pound in one day.

Anyways, as we were buying the fig tree I was wondering how long would it take to start having fruit? Would I get to eat some of it? Started thinking about all the fruit that I eat now from trees my grandfather planted more than 50 years ago, like the plum tree that just died last year and that I replacing it with a new tree. Did my grandfather dreamed about these trees?

These last day at work we have been celebrating colleagues that are retiring. One has been at WPC for 35 years, other for 25 and so on. I have been there for 14 so it is not long that I myself will have to retire. So what are my dreams until I retire? and what are my dreams for when I retire? and afterwards? One underlying issue of course is good health, physical and mental good health. So my first task is to keep healthy and improve my health with a good diet and exercise. Mental health as physical health depends on exercise, so for my mental health I have to keep learning. Keep using my brain and my intellect so it keeps working in good shape. One thing I am doing is learning something new all the time, from learning how to improve the things I normally do, like using Moodle for my classes, learning more about things I like, or learning something new, like new languages in computer programming.

I have no idea if these new things like planting a new tree will be part of my future. Or if I will be part of their future. But I feel that dreaming is about dreaming and not about the dreams. As someone said: Happiness is the road and not the finish line.

Thank You For Letting Us Dream

Thank you for letting us dream. Is how Andrew Hunt and David Thomas end their acknowledgements in their book The Pragmatic Programmer.

 I have enjoyed reading this book so much even though I am not a programmer, but the underlying framework in this book is not specific to programming but related to the general philosophy of life. How do we prioritize, organize, and accomplish writing great computing code is in a way a metaphor for how do we live our lives.
It was a nice surprise when I read the end of their acknowledgment as I am writing about dreams!

As I have been aware, mindful of how, when, and what I am dreaming I have been dreaming a lot too, but it has been a bit difficult for me to keep up with my writing. Hope that as my regular semester classes are winding down and the summer break is coming in, I will have more time to reflect and write.