WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us

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THERE ISN’T JUST ONE FUTURE

THE FUTURE SEEMS OBVIOUS IN RETROSPECT. HOW COULD we have missed it?

There are constant reminders in the news. Almost every time there is a terrorist attack or mass shooting, we hear that police and intelligence services received prior warning, that there was someone trying to pierce the fog of bureaucracy to report their fears about the suspect. “Were officials blind and deaf?” we ask ourselves. We forget that before an event occurs, there is a shifting complex of possibilities, any of which might happen. For every potential threat that is reported, hundreds never come to pass.

Once an event occurs, all those possibilities collapse into the one reality that we call the present, and then, in an instant, the past. ...