‘Perhaps the safest prediction we can make about the future is that it will surprise us.’ George Leonard in The Silent Pulse.
One of the benefits of scenario planning is said to be that it reduces surprise, an otherwise inevitable feature of the future. But where to find the ideas that make us aware of surprise before it happens?
It turns out there is a ready made class of ideas that would greatly contribute to future surprise if just some of them turned out to be true. This is the category of officially annoying ideas for which the CIA coined the term conspiracy theory, in its public assessment of the Kennedy assassination. A working definition might be that a conspiracy theory is an allegation which if true could well be something that officialdom would want to keep under wraps. Wikipedia offers a comprehensive list of conspiracy theories described with a whiff of suitably off-putting disdain. It is not that these ideas are secret – or not any longer – they have long since escaped into the wild and the game is now to keep up enough ridicule to discourage people from looking too closely. In the case of the Kennedy assassination, the event is public and undeniable. What is at stake is the claim by pesky critical thinkers that the evidence for a lone gunman doesn’t stack up and that an actual conspiracy must have been involved.
Of course, not all conspiracy theories would significantly change the future if true, as many of them relate only to our understanding of the past. There is apparently one about the Roman emperor Nero, concerning whether he really died in office or escaped into exile. It is is hard to see how the truth about this could affect our future in the 21st century. But some, the ones that interest me as a futurist, would have a huge impact on the future if true. For example, claims that there are various officially suppressed technologies such as anti-gravity, free energy, or electromagnetic healing, represent big surprise changes in the future if true. The same applies to claims that extraterrestrials are here or that climate disaster is not inevitable after all.
So what is a futurist to do with these ideas? It is certainly tempting to wonder whether some of them might actually be genuine and a properly curious futurist might well wish to sneak a closer look. I would argue that it makes great sense to examine the ones with large potential downstream impacts, to be aware of exactly what is claimed and to review the evidence that is offered. Furthermore, it is then worth tracking them to see if they are becoming more or less plausible over time as either additional evidence is brought forward, or convincing falsification is offered (something a little better than merely asserting that a claim has been debunked).
The next question is what counts as evidence. One of the tests of a worthwhile future scenario is supposed to be plausibility – not definitive proof, since we have no direct access to the future for verification (or at least not without time travel, unless that is true too). So futurists are used to operating in a grey zone between truth and fiction, trying to spot things that will become true later but which are not yet taken seriously.
Even in science definitive proof can be elusive when a radical new idea is being put forward, and philosophers of science have grappled with the question of what constitutes proof. The philosopher Karl Popper argued that no single item of confirmatory evidence could prove the truth of a theory, although many items of corroborating evidence would increase our confidence. His famous argument that a theory could however be decisively falsified, or disproved, turned out to be less clearcut than it first appeared, and he ultimately argued that what finally counted was critical thinking. What this means in practice is that we should be willing to think through the pros and cons of any given theory (conspiracy or otherwise) and have confidence in our own conclusions.
Not only is evidence inherently problematic, but what evidence there is could potentially be subject to deliberate efforts to sow confusion and doubt. There are many methods used in information warfare which would be suitable for this. Misdirection, used by conjurors, is a staple. To avoid you seeing the trick being done, your attention is drawn to something else happening at the same time. For example, suppose the media fanfare about rocket-based space launches is intended to distract attention from the implications of antigravity spacecraft? Another ruse might be to seed the conspiracy space with bogus conspiracies, to draw in overly credulous conspiracy enthusiasts and thereby expose them to ridicule on all fronts. Is this why flat earth theory has recently been gaining adherents, attracted by glossy but preposterous explainer videos released on the internet? Yet another ploy would be the limited hangout, in which a small amount of genuine information is released either to deflect attention from more sensitive information, or mixed with disinformation to muddy the water. It is as well to be aware that if officialdom really does not want the truth of something to be known, it does have the ability to go to great lengths to fool Joe Public.
Keeping these caveats in mind, it is worth taking a closer look at conspiracy theories which could have important implications for our future. These would have great potential for improving human lives, outweighing the security justification for secrecy, and representing serious moral hazard if not disclosed, and have a considerable body of purported evidence which has steadily increased over time. The conspiracy theories that fit these criteria include the energy and propulsion technologies already mentioned. The energy technologies allegedly tap quantum vacuum background energy that is abundantly available at all points in space. The propulsion technology allows the shielding or manipulation of gravity, which could enable replacement of conventional aircraft. It is claimed that these technologies have been used to construct ‘flying saucer’ type spacecraft for several decades, supposedly including the TR3B triangular spacecraft, which is featured in a number of witness videos uploaded to the internet. Three US patents covering these technologies, US10144532B2 (2018), US10322827B2 (2019) and US20190348597A1 (2019 pending), were granted to the US Navy in 2018 and 2019. Strictly speaking, so much has now been disclosed about these particular technologies that they are in effect no longer conspiracy theories, but represent established military know-how, even if they would still be widely disbelieved. This weirdly schizophrenic situation is a strong indicator that a process of ‘stealth disclosure’ is underway, possibly in psychologically gradual stages, and may in due course involve other previously secret matters.
The significance of these patents if released for civilian use is obviously enormous. At a time when energy shortages and carbon emissions are on everyone’s mind, these concerns would be eliminated at a stroke. Flying cars and low cost space travel would become available, roads and ugly power lines could be dismantled, and the economy would be free to boom. Scenarios resembling 1950s science fiction spring up, almost ready written.
If we were to conclude that certain conspiracy theories such as these are on the balance of probabilities true, then we are dealing with ideas that fall into the futurist’s grey zone. As a pragmatic matter they must be treated as untrue in the present, but there is always the chance that officialdom might change its mind in the future and reveal that they are indeed true. This official disclosure would presumably reveal that they have been true all along, and that say, civilian sightings of TR3Bs in the past were not delusional. So while they were designated as untrue, with much parading of misdirection such as chemical rockets, they were in active use by the secret parts of the state, just not made available to the private economy for the general betterment of human life. Military secrecy would have supervened, an idea which is fairly easy to believe, however disagreeable it may be.
Any important idea that must currently be regarded as untrue but which could plausibly and easily become true is of course perfect material to be included in scenarios and other future prognostications. Particularly if the idea in question is familiar as a concept from science fiction, is already supported by a good deal of evidence, is actually believed by a subset of the population, and would be a big deal if true. What more could a futurist want?