Niall Ferguson & Peter Schwartz, “Historian vs. Futurist on Human Progress”
April 30th, 02008 by Stewart Brand
Past vs. Future
In what turned out to be a riveting evening, historian Niall Ferguson and futurist Peter Schwartz fire-hosed each other with enough ideas, frames of reference, ripostes, and eloquences to lead to a clear conceptual divergence. At the same time, the two were discovering, live in front of an audience, new ways they might work together on future projects.
Ferguson began by pointing out that while we face many futures, there is only one past, and its residents outnumber us— only 6 percent of all humans are now alive. Historians, he said, “commune with the dead. We re-enact their thoughts, in their context and ours.”
Historians look for rough regularities, such as he found in his analysis of the wars and hatred played out in the 20th Century. In his book, WAR OF THE WORLD, he describes how the combination of economic volatility, ethnic conflict, and failing empire always led to spirals of lethal violence. The advance of science and technology has not eliminated the possibility of violence but may have made it more powerful than ever. The three causes are still in play. “Our job is to keep them from coinciding again.”
Ferguson ended with a critique of Schwartz’s book on scenario planning, THE ART OF THE LONG VIEW, which he thought showed signs of “heuristic bias.” When Schwartz asked Ferguson to expand on that idea, Ferguson pointed out there was a whole chapter in the book about “The Global Teenager,” which seemed spurious. It merely reflected Schwartz’s personal experience: “You were a teenager when teenagers mattered. ”
Historians also have heuristic biases, Ferguson added, such as their expectation that “great events should have great causes.” Historians have much to learn from complexity theory and evolution, he said. His own work with “counter-factual history” helps expose critical moments in history and provides a way to “think about what didn’t happen.” The counter-factual technique is an application of scenario thinking to the past.
In Schwartz’s opening remarks, he said that his plans to write a book titled THE CASE FOR OPTIMISM were derailed by reading Ferguson’s WAR OF THE WORLD. He’s been grappling with the issues Ferguson raised for 18 months. “You do alternative pasts, I do alternative futures. Where historians commune with the dead, futurists have imaginary friends.”
Schwartz characterized Ferguson’s view of history as basically down, with an upside possibility, whereas his own view was of history as basically up, with always the possibility of getting things wrong. For Schwartz, the second half of the 20th Century showed an upside momentum, with a fraction of the violent deaths—5% of humans killed violently in the first half, 0.2 % in the second half. The Cold War ended quietly. Women were liberated. China took off. Prosperity accelerated. Everything from Wikipedia to cellphones empowered the grassroots.
In response, Ferguson noted Schwartz’s “faith in technology” and proposed it reflected his training as an engineer. “Aren’t you like the pre-1914 people who said that war was impossible because of all the new technology and commerce?” Schwartz agreed that the parallel is worrying.
Ferguson said, “I think our difference is that I’m a pessimist and you’re an optimist. You’re Pangloss and I’m Cassandra.” Schwartz noted that since his parents were in slave-labor camps in World War II, and he was born in a displaced-person camp after the war, “It would be churlish not to be an optimist.” Ferguson said, “That would make me skeptical about technology. The world leader in science and technology in 1940 was Nazi Germany.”
Questions from the audience ended with one asking whether optimism or pessimism was a more useful way to think about the future. Schwartz said, “Optimism lets you imagine how you can overcome problems, and those possibilities motivate change.” Ferguson said, “You must always focus on worst-case scenarios, and history will teach them to you.”
-Stewart Brand
April 30th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Thank you for summarizing the debate between Ferguson and Schwartz. I wish I could have been there, because I would have followed the last question posed to the two gentlemen, by asking Ferguson: Why choose to live in a world that only brings disappointment? My view is that Ferguson is an optimist or else he would commit suicide.
However, when one speaks in terms of our species, I could see how one could be pessimistic about its long-term future and feel optimistic about one’s own short-term future.
Perhaps, Ferguson should have said, “We must focus on worst-case scenarios, and history will teach them to us.”
May 1st, 2008 at 2:52 am
Sounds fascinating – wish I was there! :)
From reading the above, the point that sticks out most for me is the “Optimism Vs Pessimism?” question… it brings to mind all sorts of sci-fi-y/time-travel-y thoughts along the lines of “What we do if we could know the future?” and “What if we could change the past?”
If we are optimistic about the future, we have to generally believe that things will turn out okay… but would that then make us complacent and therefore less likely to put so much effort into reversing negative or harmful trends? It could be a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy in reverse…
On the other hand if we are too pessimistic, we could end up believing there is no point in attempting to instigate positive change, because nothing we do will make any difference…
Like many things in life, I’d say that striking a balance, arriving at a sort of mid-point, is the way to go… a Pessimistically Optimistic or Optimistically Pessimistic approach! We need to be aware of how badly things could go, but at the same time believe we can change things for the good… learn from the past, but believe in the future! :)
May 5th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
At the tail end of the talk, Ferguson said that Schwartz always postulataed three scenarios, Panglossian, disastrous, and Goldilocks. He said the important job is to look for ways disaster can happen, so you can prevent it. The other outcomes will take care of themselves. The discussion ended and Schwartz never had a chance to respond. So I will.
The bright futures don’t take care of themselves. They are the result of a lot of work by people who exhort others, and who go to jail, and who march, and who become martyrs. A single book, if engaging enough and with the right amount of invective or hyperbole, can turn people away from disaster, or help innoculate against it. The book “1984″ didn’t match reality partly because it existed. “Silent Spring” helped avoid a Silent Spring.
I suspect one reason good futures happen is that they work from the bottom up. Leaders appreciate Machiavelli’s warning about starting new things. India became an independed democracy because many people stopped trains by sitting on tracks, and Gandhi went to jail and stopped eating. Ferguson thinks more top down.
Also, seeds take time to grow, and predicting which ones survive is difficult. A particular crucifiction in Jerusalem didn’t make any news at all in Rome. The difference today is that there might have been something about it on the Internet. Bottom up is getting easer to do.
Of course, not all bottom-up moves are good. The fascists came up from the bottom. So did the Ku Klux Klan.
May 12th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
[…] comments and his discussion with Younghusband on the issue, the .mp3 of the Long Now Foundation debate between Niall Ferguson and Peter Schwartz is now […]
May 15th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Schwartz came off the worse, if only because it’s so much easier for a futurist to get it wrong (it’s almost guaranteed) than for a historian.
I think one must be pessimistic to work for a decent future. Consider climate change - is the good work being done by those who think it’s not a problem or by those who think it is? Be pessimistic about the future but work towards a better one, which also seems to be behind Ferguson’s liberalism [or conservatism, for American readers].
May 19th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
Thank you LNF for putting these events together and for the free audio downloads.
I wish the format had been different. If they’d been given a certain topic (unknown to each beforehand) to bat around, I would’ve gotten better insights into their ways of thinking. I’m imagining a broad topic, such as China or the EU, hell maybe even the notion of progress, which each has certainly spent time considering.
May 25th, 2008 at 8:46 am
What a great debate ! Kudos for the one who invented the format: one talks, other summarize then question.
As PS already mentioned before, Ferguson had a small advantage in the start but Schwartz made his point brightly.
I would like to add that I agree with Ferguson both on his thoughts about being pessimistic on the future, and specially, on his position about the role of technology on it’s modification (or lack of power to do so).
June 12th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
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