Chapter 6. Methods and Frameworks – Building Adaptive Foresight Skills

2. Anticipation (Convergent thinking)

Key Practice Specialties and Communities for Adaptive Foresight

 

Key Anticipation-Associated Practitioner Methods

Actuarial Science
Risk data collection, reference class formation, and other methods of quantitative risk assessment.

Analytical Hierarchy Process
Use of hierarchical mapping and pairwise comparison for quant. decision-making, modeling, forecasting.

Bias Identification and Bias Mitigation
Finding cultural biases & cognitive biases in foresight environment, and exercises to mitigate bias.

Causal Modeling, Systems Analysis, and Simulation
Representing system actors and behaviors in causal or computer models (Example: agent models)

Delphi
Classic method to seek convergence from groups via successive opinion and feedback cycles.

Developmental Foresight
Anticipating optimal, convergent, irreversible trends and emergences, at multiple systems levels.

Discontinuity and Wildcard Anticipation
Finding key trend reversals/discontinuities and low probability, high impact (positive or negative) events.

Evolutionary Foresight
Identifying processes of creative, divergent, unpredictable change, at multiple systems levels.

Forecast Value Added (FVA) Analysis
Predictive evaluation relative to the null hypothesis, to see if team’s forecast truly beats a naive model.

Foresight Workshops
Facilitative and normative methods used in groups to generate desirable future states for the firm.

Genius Forecasting (Genius Visioning)
Gifted and respected experts are asked for predictions or aspirational visions, often outside their fields.

Intellectual Property Strategy
Defensive or offensive techniques to create or protect a firm’s intellectual property.

Learning Curves
Modeling exponential, power-law, S-curve, U-curve & experience curves, while seeking discontinuities.

Prediction Analysis
Examining past predictions and assessing their methods, bias, accuracy, and utility (benefit to cost).

Predictive Analytics
Techniques from statistics, modeling, data mining, and machine learning to make quant. predictions.

Prediction Markets and Prediction Platforms
Markets and platforms for making predictions and finding the best predictors by subject area.

Psychological Trait Assessment (Personality Typing)
Diagnostic models for future-predictable psych. traits (OCEAN, StrengthsFinder, MBTI, DISC, etc.).

Reference Class Forecasting
Quantitative method of predicting the future by comparing to similar past outcomes (a reference class).

Retrodiction
Predicting a past event with your forecasting model, then seeking evidence for it. Good validation tool.

Resiliency Analysis and Resilient Control Systems
Infrastructure, policies and strategies to make a system resilient to damage. (Or better yet, to benefit from damage – see Antifragile, Taleb, 2014)

Risk Avoidance, Risk Reduction and Risk Insurance Analysis
Risk prioritization, risk avoidance, reduction, and acceptance/insurance options and plans.

Risk Models and Risk Prediction
Building statistical models of risk occurrence, making them causally predictive.

Statistical Models
Probabilistic relationships between variables in math models, e.g. Demographic & Econometric models.

Trend Extrapolation and Regression Analysis
Acquisition and projection of historical time-series data as a forecast, subject to error and uncertainty.

Vulnerability Assessment
Qualitative risk assessment regarding potential accidents, crime, lawsuits, other adverse events.

Wargaming
Strategy games that deal with threat and security operations of various types, real or fictional.

Comments
  • Alex Teselkin
    Reply

    To bomb our readers with math! An example of an anticipation analysis workflow:

    START WITH LOTS OF DATA

    Getting rid of useless data — Filtering, Noise Reduction
    – Fourier Transformation: Converts time-series to frequency domain and vice versa
    – High pass filter: The high frequencies gets a pass, low frequencies (including steady and none-periodic signals) are filtered out.
    – Low pass filter: The low frequencies gets a pass
    – Binary masking/gating: take noise sample, zero the frequency bins where energy is less than that of the noise profile
    – Averaging: gets rid of random noise and leave stead signal

    Making sense of the rest of the data — Representations (graphs), Periodicity, Statistics
    – Time-frequency trade off: uncertainty principal
    – Welch Periodogram: Fourier transformation window by window with overlaps
    – Spectrogram: Fourier transformation with time AND frequency information
    – Wavelet Transformation: adaptive representation of frequency domain signals
    – Cross correlation: ways to find correlation between two signals, “likelihood”
    – Auto correlation: ways to find correlation with itself, hence, periodicity
    – Zero crossing: count the number of zeros after normalizing data set
    – Logarithmic representations: Log X, Log Y, Log X Y
    – Distributions: Uniform distribution – Binomial distribution – Normal distribution – Poisson distribution
    – Error range of distributions and what they mean
    – Significance test: T Test, Z Test, etc
    – Relations: Derivatives, Integrals, aka difference and sum over time
    – Stochastic Processes: modelling the unknown, how to deal with data that humans cannot find all the intricate rules of, how to set appropriate time window, how to give appropriate estimations, etc
    – Numerical methods: Iterative calculations

    Categorizing data — Clustering, Correlation
    – Multi Linear Regression
    – Cluster Analysis

    Making decision — Machine Learning, Neural Networks
    – Neural Concepts: Hodgkin Huxley Model – Squid Axon Mathematical Model – Neural Adaptation – Soma, dendrites and axons – Time-frequency conversion and thresholding – Fractal complexity
    – Information Theory: Shannon, describing information as entropy (order) with a focus on defining transmission, storage, and attempts to bridge to not only sensory communications but neural principals in general
    – Game Theory: algorithmic approach using a combination of stochastic and deterministic processes, trying to arrive at a decision based on such estimations
    – Machine Learning: Using neural concepts, modelling of each node as a summing location. In every network there are features (initial nodes), intermediate nodes (might or might not have meaning), and final outcomes. Training stage trains the nodes, application stage applies the already trained nodes.
    – Example: 5 features — colour, shape, taste, size, weight. 2 decisions —like, don’t like. 5 training data — apple, orange, banana, monkey, rock. Apple is red, round, sweet, small, not-heavy, and you like it. All those nodes +1. Orange is orange, round, sweet, small, not-heavy, and you like it. All those nodes + 1. Banana is yellow, long, sweet, small, not-heavy, and you like it. All those nodes + 1. Monkey is brown, humanoid, chewy, big, heavy, and you don’t like it. All those nodes – 1. Rock is grey, round, hard, small, heavy, and you don’t like it. All those nodes -1. In the end, taste is the most prominent node and will have the biggest weighting. You trained the system, now you pass something like “pineapple” into the system, it breaks it into features, compares each feature to the weighting, and arrives at a conclusion: “the decision is you like it”.

    All of these methods can be run iteratively, if needed.
    All of them can be done in Matlab, some just a one-liner. That’s why I encourage to use them.

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Table of Contents

guideintrobookwhite

Chapter 2. Personal Foresight – Becoming an Effective Self-Leader

Chapter 2: Personal Foresight

Becoming an Effective Self-Leader

Chapter 4. Models – Foundations for Organizational Foresight

Chapter 4: Models

Foundations for Organizational Foresight

Chapter 7. Acceleration – Guiding Our Extraordinary Future

Chapter 7: Acceleration

Guiding Our Extraordinary Future (In Process)

II. Global Progress: 5 Goals, 10 Values, Many Trends

Innovation: Our Abundant Future
Intelligence: Our Augmented Future
Interdependence: Our Civil Future
Immunity: Our Protected Future
Sustainability: Our Rebalanced Future

III. Universal Accelerating Change

Great Race to Inner Space: Our Surprising Future
Entropy&Information: We’re Running Down & Up
The Puzzle of Meaning: We Have No Einstein Yet
Trees, Funnels & Landscapes: Intro to Evo Devo
Big Picture Change: Five Scales of Accelerating ED
Transcension Hypothesis: Where Acceleratn Ends?
IDABDAK: Social Response to Accel & Developmnt
We’re On a Runaway Train: Being Accelaware

IV. Evo Devo and Exponential Foresight

Seeing It All: Accel., Diverg, Adapt, Convrg, Decel.
Natural (I4S) Innovation: The Evolutionary Drive
Natural (I4S) Intelligence: The Human-AI Partnership
Natural (I4S) Morality: Why Empathy and Ethics Rule
Natural (I4S) Security: Strength from Disruption
Natural (I4S) Sustainability: The Developmental Drive
S-Curves: Managing the Four Constituencies
Pain to Gain: Traversing the Three Kuznets Phases
Hype to Reality: Beyond Hype Cycles to Reality Checks
Exponentials Database: Measuring Accelerations
TINA Trends: Societal Evolutionary Development
Managing Change: STEEPCOP Events, Probs, Ideas
A Great Shift: A Survival to a Sentient Economy

V. Evo Devo and Exponential Activism

Building Protopias: Five Goals of Social Progress
Normative Foresight: Ten Values of Society
Top & STEEPCOP Acceleratns: Positive & Negative
Dystopias, Risks, and Failure States
Three Levels of Activism: People, Tech & Universe
A Great Opportunity: Exponential Empowerment

 

Chapter 8. Your Digital Self – The Human Face of the Coming Singularity

Chapter 8: Your Digital Self

The Human Face of the Coming Singularity (In Process)

I. Your Personal AI (PAI): Your Digital Self

Digital Society: Data, Mediation, and Agents
Personal AIs: Advancing the Five Goals
PAI Innovation: Abundance and Diversity
PAI Intelligence: Bio-Inspired AI
PAI Morality: Selection and Groupnets
PAI Security: Safe Learning Agents
PAI Sustainability: Science and Balance
The Human Face of the Coming Singularity

II. PAI Protopias & Dystopias in 8 Domains

1. Personal Agents: News, Ent., Education
2. Social Agents: Relat. and Social Justice
3. Political Agents :  Activism & Represent.
4. Economic Agents:  Retail, Finance, Entrep
5. Builder Agents :  Work, Innov. & Science
6. Environ. Agents : Pop. and Sustainability
7. Health Agents :  Health, Wellness, Death
8. Security Agents :  Def., Crime, Corrections

III. PAI Activism & Exponential Empowerment

Next Government: PAIs, Groupnets, Democ.
Next Economy: Creat. Destr. & Basic Income
Next Society: PAI Ent., Mortality & Uploading
What Will Your PAI Contribution Be?

Chapter 10. Startup Ideas – Great Product & Service Challenges for Entrepreneurs

Chapter 10: Startup Ideas

Great Product and Service Challenges for Entrepreneurs (In Process)

I. 4U’s Idea Hub: Building Better Futures

Air Deliveries and Air Taxis: Finally Solving Urban Gridlock
Ballistic Shields and Gun Control: Protecting Us All from Lone Shooters
Bioinspiration Wiki: Biomimetics and Bio-Inspired Design
Brain Preservation Services: Memory and Mortality Redefined
Carcams: Document Thieves, Bad Driving, and Bad Behavior
Competition in Govt Services: Less Corruption, More Innovation
Computer Adaptive Education (CAE): Better Learning and Training
Conversational Deep Learning Devsuites: Millions of AI Coders
Digital Tables: Telepresence, Games, Entertainment & Education
Dynaships: Sustainable Low-Speed Cargo Shipping
Electromagnetic Suspension: Nausea-Free Working & Reading in Cars
Epigenetic Health Tests: Cellular Aging, Bad Diet, Body Abuse Feedback
Fireline Explosives and Ember Drones: Next-Gen Fire Control
Global English: Empowering the Next Generation of Global Youth
Greenbots: Drone Seeders and Robotic Waterers for Mass Regreening
High-Density Housing and Zoning: Making Our Cities Affordable Again
Highway Enclosures and Trail Networks: Green and Quiet Urban Space
Inflatable Packaging: Faster and Greener Shipping and Returns
Internet of Families: Connecting People Over Things
Kidcams: Next-Gen Security for Child Safety and Empowerment
Kidpods: Indoor & Outdoor Parent-Assistive Toyboxes
Microdesalination: Democratizing Sustainable Fresh Water Production
Noise Monitors: Documenting and Reducing Noise Pollution
Oceanside Baths: Sustainable Year Round Beach Enjoyment
Open Blood Scanners: DIY Citizen Health Care Sensor Tech
Open Streaming Radio: User-Centered Audio Creation and Rating
Open Streaming Video: User-Centered Video Creation and Rating
Open Values Filters: Social Rankers, Arg. Mappers, and Consensus Finders
Personal AIs: Your Private Advisor, Activist, and Interface to the World
Pet Empowerment: Next-Gen Rights and Abilities for Our Domestic Animals
Safe Closets: Fire-, Earthquake-, and Intruder-Proof Retreat Spaces
Safe Cars: Reducing Our Insane 1.3M Annual Auto Deaths Today
Safe Motorcycles: Lane Splitting in Gridlock Without Risk of Death
Shared Value Insurance: User-Centered Risk Reduction Services
Sleeperbuses and Microhotels: Demonetized Intercity Travel
Space-Based Solar Power: Stratellite Powering and Weather Management
Stratellites: Next-Gen Urban Broadband, Transparency, and Security
Touch DNA: Next-Gen Home Security and Crime Deterrence
View Towers: Improving Urban Walkability, Inspiration, and Community

Chapter 11. Evo Devo Foresight – Unpredictable and Predictable Futures

Chapter 11: Evo Devo Foresight

Unpredictable and Predictable Futures

Appendix 1. Peer Advice – Building a Successful Foresight Practice