Another big trend has been the rise of right-wing populist parties in many countries. That has been a pretty solid prediction for a few years, but now there is evidence that those parties are no longer growing more popular. Will they retreat, as mainstream parties adopt their agendas, or is this just a slight pause? Again, I would say the previous trend has been exhausted and this is a new and hard-to-predict moment.
Another recent trend, the proliferation of new #MeToo cases and an accompanying rise in publicity, may also be losing momentum. Figures such as Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein have receded from the news. Could this issue come back with another major celebrity-linked scandal? Absolutely — but it also might have cooled off for a while. The prediction that there will be more #MeToo cases is no longer so easy.
Are there examples of contrary cases, where an important preexisting trend still seems very much in force? Well, carbon emissions will almost certainly get worse before they get better. When it comes to temperatures, however, the global data have exhibited periodic flat periods or even declines before renewed rises. So at least in the short run, predictability there is not so great either.
One implication is that the coming year may hold an especially large number of surprises. Alternatively, rational people (and readers of Philip Tetlock, who has studied the difficulty of forecasting the future) might discard their hubris and not be very surprised at all.
In any case, it is a scary moment. Past performance is not indicative of future results, as they say on Wall Street, and that may be even more true in 2020. Don’t throw out your history books, but you may want to open your mind about what happens next.
The opinion piece was provided by Bloomberg News.