Predictions, Especially About the Future

Spoiler alert: We don't predict as well as we think we do.

“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

—Yogi Berra

Baseball legend Yogi Berra is revered for both his Hall-of-Fame catching skills and his malapropisms and amusing quotes (including, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it,” and “It’s like déjà vu all over again”). Though Berra does not top the list of Stoic philosophers, his quip about the future contains a valuable conflict resolution lesson.

Consider a recent conflict you’ve witnessed, as a neutral observer or active participant. Maybe a disagreement at home, a misunderstanding at the office, or even a court case in which you’re embroiled as a litigant or counsel. Perhaps you’ve read something in the news that gets your blood boiling, or you became locked in a heated social media exchange with someone who just doesn’t seem to get it.

Now, consider: Does the conflict stem, at least in part, from differing assumptions about the future? Does your point of view, as a passive or active participant in a disagreement, depend on implicit predictions you make about what the future holds? Does the strength of your argument depend on your expectation of events yet to occur?

You might think you know how the judge will rule on your case, but could you be wrong? Stranger things have happened. Can you really predict how much the jury will award your client? Seems like every day we are surprised by a verdict appearing in the headlines.

And lately we hear jokes like, “Who had (insert wildly unforeseen event that actually occurred) on their 2021 bingo card?!?” that are funny precisely because of how wrong our assumptions about the future can be. It’s stuff so outrageous that no one saw it coming. Or take the running gripes about weather forecasters who, despite access to state-of-the-art technology, can’t seem to tell us when we’ll get wet and when the hurricane will spare us. It’s not that they’re wrong, it’s just that they’re making predictions based on probability, not absolute forecasts. Even though you got drenched yesterday despite a mere 10% chance of rain, that doesn’t mean the six o’clock news was incorrect. You just got caught by the odds.

Stoicism helps us understand that there are things we can control and things we cannot. That understanding requires an acceptance, to some degree, of an uncertain future.

It’s really tough to predict the future and, as much as we believe we are in control and know what will come to pass, we simply cannot reliably forecast events as well as we tend to think. We can learn from experience, from history, and from science. We might make decisions based on our “gut” instincts. But an array of well-documented cognitive biases – like the so-called gambler’s fallacy, optimism bias, confirmation bias, and availability bias, among others – naturally conspire to lead us astray. So we make mistakes all the time, miscalculating and misreading the odds, convincing ourselves we’re more in control than we are.

In your next dispute, consider how assumptions about the future affect the positions of the parties involved, including your own. Recognize where and why you might disagree. Appreciating future uncertainty allows us to better understand other perspectives, prepare for inevitable surprises, and rethink the roots of our disagreements.