Futuríveis
terça-feira, julho 26, 2005
Trends
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A trend is something that appears to be happening but is in fact an illusion. All we know is what has happened; what will happen is mere speculation. Even what is happening is shrouded in mystery because it takes time to record and interpret observations. This doesn’t present a problem if history is what you are interested in, but trends are used mostly to pronounce on current affairs or to predict future ones.
Trends are good fun and make for great copy in the press. Editors love it when someone in authority issues a trend warning because it is the cheapest way to a headline that doesn’t need double-checking. Recently, we were warned of a pending fertility crisis in Europe on the authority of a leading fertility expert, but it turned out that the information did not come from new research but from a paper pulling together known material from old sources.
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There are two ways of improving a trend prediction. The first possibility is to build in a “path dependency” logic. When what happens tomorrow is a result of events or decisions yesterday, one ought to be able to predict more safely. But the experience is that path dependency is difficult to observe except after the fact. Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979 on what was thought to be a neo-liberal trend that would destroy the welfare state. But it did not, and we should have known by taking into consideration that the welfare state is a ship that takes a long time to turn around. Perhaps Thatcher was not really interested, or perhaps the concept of the NHS and social security was so entrenched (in the middle class) that it was not in her power to change much.
The other possibility is to build in a “behavioural” logic. From about 1950 to 1980, taxes increased steadily in most industrial countries. (After 1980, the level of taxation has remained more constant.) Economists were worried that heavier taxes would create disincentives that would distort work and productivity. A colossal effort was invested in researching “behavioural responses” to rising taxes. At the outset, the assumption was that two effects would more or less balance each other out: some would work less because work paid less and others would work more in order to have the same after-tax pay. After thousands of studies, we still know nothing more at all about whether one effect is more powerful than the other.
The problem with trends is that they are predicted as if things just happen. But things happen for reasons and reasons are always changing, often suddenly and usually unpredictably. London was on a trend of joy and celebration earlier this month which turned to grief and sorrow on July 7. Tsunamis, stock market crashes and unexpected decisions by the International Olympic Committee are events, not trends.
China and Vietnam today have communist governments that encourage private enterprise. The result in China, for example, is that the proportion of the population in extreme poverty has fallen from 60 to 15 per cent from 1980 to 2000. If anyone had predicted that in 1980, they would have been considered mad. In Britain, Labour won a landslide election victory in 1997 on a programme of reversing Thatcherism, then cultivated a careful continuity of Conservative economic policy, even outdoing the Conservatives by delegating the power over interest rates to the Bank of England, and won re-election twice. Such a chain of events could not have been foreseen.
Poverty south of the Sahara in Africa is on everyone’s mind, but it is utterly unpredictable what will happen. The continent may be at the point of take-off in respect of progress and development, and many who know Africa believe that to be the case. Or it may continue its decline into poverty. Today, there is no way of knowing for certain if, in 20 years, we will tell a story of Africa that is akin to the one for China from 1980 to 2000.
Is the Italian population on a trend to extinction? It is true that, based on the current, ultra-low birth rate, the population will be reduced to 25 per cent of its present size by the end of the century (and the population of Germans to half of its present size). But will that happen? Not likely. We are now seeing a great awareness of the threat of population decline. That is carrying through to more active family-friendly policies in most European countries. We know that young people in Europe want more children than they are having and such policies are likely to make it easier for them to realise their family aspirations.
Demographics, as we should know now, are the result of quirky human behaviour. After the second world war, what followed was a baby boom rather than the social crisis that was expected. Europeans were happy and confident and decided to have babies. Then, in one generation, baby-boom turned to baby-bust. Demography is the most robust of all social sciences in methodology, but both baby-boom and baby-bust came as total surprises to the demographers. The same was true for the worldwide fall in birth rates in developing countries (except for in parts of Africa) from the mid-1990s, which has resulted in the unexpected prediction that the world population will reach its highest number around or after the middle of this century and then start to fall.
The very notion of a trend is misleading. Africa is not part of any trend; it can change. China has not been part of a trend; it did change unexpectedly. There has been no population trend in Europe; it’s up and down all the time. Global warming is not a trend; it is a result (the experts say) of human behaviour and can change with changing decisions.
The future is unknowable because it depends on people and because people reflect, have will, make mistakes, co-operate and change their minds and ways. The past turns into one of many possible futures through human agency. The way to understand what is happening in the world is not to draw trajectories on paper but to ask what people are thinking and doing in their own lives and collective endeavours.
Stein Ringen is a professor of sociology at Green College, Oxford.
...
FT.com / Arts & Weekend - Trends in high places
A trend is something that appears to be happening but is in fact an illusion. All we know is what has happened; what will happen is mere speculation. Even what is happening is shrouded in mystery because it takes time to record and interpret observations. This doesn’t present a problem if history is what you are interested in, but trends are used mostly to pronounce on current affairs or to predict future ones.
Trends are good fun and make for great copy in the press. Editors love it when someone in authority issues a trend warning because it is the cheapest way to a headline that doesn’t need double-checking. Recently, we were warned of a pending fertility crisis in Europe on the authority of a leading fertility expert, but it turned out that the information did not come from new research but from a paper pulling together known material from old sources.
...
There are two ways of improving a trend prediction. The first possibility is to build in a “path dependency” logic. When what happens tomorrow is a result of events or decisions yesterday, one ought to be able to predict more safely. But the experience is that path dependency is difficult to observe except after the fact. Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979 on what was thought to be a neo-liberal trend that would destroy the welfare state. But it did not, and we should have known by taking into consideration that the welfare state is a ship that takes a long time to turn around. Perhaps Thatcher was not really interested, or perhaps the concept of the NHS and social security was so entrenched (in the middle class) that it was not in her power to change much.
The other possibility is to build in a “behavioural” logic. From about 1950 to 1980, taxes increased steadily in most industrial countries. (After 1980, the level of taxation has remained more constant.) Economists were worried that heavier taxes would create disincentives that would distort work and productivity. A colossal effort was invested in researching “behavioural responses” to rising taxes. At the outset, the assumption was that two effects would more or less balance each other out: some would work less because work paid less and others would work more in order to have the same after-tax pay. After thousands of studies, we still know nothing more at all about whether one effect is more powerful than the other.
The problem with trends is that they are predicted as if things just happen. But things happen for reasons and reasons are always changing, often suddenly and usually unpredictably. London was on a trend of joy and celebration earlier this month which turned to grief and sorrow on July 7. Tsunamis, stock market crashes and unexpected decisions by the International Olympic Committee are events, not trends.
China and Vietnam today have communist governments that encourage private enterprise. The result in China, for example, is that the proportion of the population in extreme poverty has fallen from 60 to 15 per cent from 1980 to 2000. If anyone had predicted that in 1980, they would have been considered mad. In Britain, Labour won a landslide election victory in 1997 on a programme of reversing Thatcherism, then cultivated a careful continuity of Conservative economic policy, even outdoing the Conservatives by delegating the power over interest rates to the Bank of England, and won re-election twice. Such a chain of events could not have been foreseen.
Poverty south of the Sahara in Africa is on everyone’s mind, but it is utterly unpredictable what will happen. The continent may be at the point of take-off in respect of progress and development, and many who know Africa believe that to be the case. Or it may continue its decline into poverty. Today, there is no way of knowing for certain if, in 20 years, we will tell a story of Africa that is akin to the one for China from 1980 to 2000.
Is the Italian population on a trend to extinction? It is true that, based on the current, ultra-low birth rate, the population will be reduced to 25 per cent of its present size by the end of the century (and the population of Germans to half of its present size). But will that happen? Not likely. We are now seeing a great awareness of the threat of population decline. That is carrying through to more active family-friendly policies in most European countries. We know that young people in Europe want more children than they are having and such policies are likely to make it easier for them to realise their family aspirations.
Demographics, as we should know now, are the result of quirky human behaviour. After the second world war, what followed was a baby boom rather than the social crisis that was expected. Europeans were happy and confident and decided to have babies. Then, in one generation, baby-boom turned to baby-bust. Demography is the most robust of all social sciences in methodology, but both baby-boom and baby-bust came as total surprises to the demographers. The same was true for the worldwide fall in birth rates in developing countries (except for in parts of Africa) from the mid-1990s, which has resulted in the unexpected prediction that the world population will reach its highest number around or after the middle of this century and then start to fall.
The very notion of a trend is misleading. Africa is not part of any trend; it can change. China has not been part of a trend; it did change unexpectedly. There has been no population trend in Europe; it’s up and down all the time. Global warming is not a trend; it is a result (the experts say) of human behaviour and can change with changing decisions.
The future is unknowable because it depends on people and because people reflect, have will, make mistakes, co-operate and change their minds and ways. The past turns into one of many possible futures through human agency. The way to understand what is happening in the world is not to draw trajectories on paper but to ask what people are thinking and doing in their own lives and collective endeavours.
Stein Ringen is a professor of sociology at Green College, Oxford.
...
FT.com / Arts & Weekend - Trends in high places
posted by CMT, 4:39 da tarde
