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TRANSCRIPT: TAI ASKS WHY - FUTURE

Tai Poole: So, I don’t know about you guys, but 2020, it took me by surprise. I mean, here I was just living my life, going to school, hanging with my friends and then boom, pandemic! Lockdown! Eugh! And, I mean, I’m not a huge planner, but I had a general idea of what my future was going to look like, and it wasn’t a COVID lockdown, you know? And now, well, everything is just all up in the air. Who knows what 2021 is going to look like? Will there be aliens or zombies or alien zombies? I mean, it sounds crazy but at this point it really feels like anything could happen. And it kind of keeps me up at night. I wish there was a way I could just look into the future with my crystal ball so I could check to see if it’s all gonna be alright. And if it’s not going to be alright, at least then I could prepare for whatever strange problems are coming next.

Tai Poole: I know there are some people who can predict the future. And I don’t mean people who read tea leaves and tarot cards. I’m talking about virus researchers, weather forecasters, earthquake scientists. That is literally their job - telling us what’s going to come. But they also get it wrong sometimes. So is there anyone that can actually guess perfectly? Is it possible to predict the future?

[Clip of “Tai Asks Why Theme Music” by Johnny Spence]

Tai Poole: I'm Tai and this is my podcast, Tai Asks Why. There are so many good questions out there that you really want to have answered. Where is the internet? Why are viruses so good at what they do? What’s at the bottom of the ocean? Why do humans dance? What’s going on in my teen brain? And is it possible to predict the future? It turns out that looking into the future is a job - for cash. No, I'm not talking about psychics. I'm talking about futurologists!

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] So you can predict the future?

Sound Clip: [Rose Eveleth] [laughter] I wish! I would be much richer than I am if I could actually predict the future.

Tai Poole: That’s Rose Eveleth. She’s the host and creator of the Flash Forward podcast, which is all about the different possibilities of the future.

Sound Clip: [Rose Eveleth] What I do is talk to a lot of different people, including historians, people who invent things, people who look at a lot of the times, the past. There’re so many things that we can learn from how things have gone already to kind of help understand how they might go in the future. And then to think about what are the things at play? What are the sort of forces that we should be paying attention to that are shaping the future so that we can either, you know, cheer them on or maybe tell them to stop?

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Yeah. OK. That makes sense. Like, the future is unknown, so we have to start with what we do know, which is the past. And then based on what has happened, you make guesses about what probably will happen later. But that’s kind of confusing because the whole thing about the future is that it’s not the past, right? And, like, when I think of the future I think all about the sci-fi movies I’ve seen, and they promise a lot of bizarro future things that don’t exist yet. Like in “Back to the Future.”

Sound Clip: [Dr. Emmett in “Back to the Future”] When this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you're going to see some serious [bleep] [car engine racing]

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Time-travelling DeLoreans, hoverboards…

Sound Clip: [Dr. Emmett in “Back to the Future”] What did I tell you?

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Have you seen “Back to the Future”?

Sound Clip: [Rose Eveleth] I have seen “Back to the Future”.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] I was kind of bummed out because I saw it - I think I saw it around 2015. I think it was the year 2015. And they go to the future and it's 2015. And, you know, everything's crazy and stuff. We don't have any of that stuff. And it bummed me out. I mean, do you think the future is going to look kind of like really futuristic with, like, flying cars and hoverboards? Or will it just kind of be like right now, but our cell phones are stronger?

Sound Clip: [Rose Eveleth] [laughter] I think yes and no, right. Like, the future will never look exactly the way we imagine it. And that's kind of a good thing, right? Because that means that it will be weirder and more interesting and sometimes a little scarier, but sometimes more fun than we can possibly imagine. Right? I think also, you know, a lot of the time when we think about the future, we think about flying cars and technological changes. Right? That the future is brought in by these fancy robots or sort of things that are shiny and go beep, boop, beep and, you know, do all those things. But there are other ways to measure sort of, like, cool improvements in the future. Right. Like today we have gay marriage in the United States. Didn't have that before, that’s not something you show in a cool sci-fi movie necessarily, but it's really important. Right? So there are other ways, I think, to measure cool future stuff that don't look like hoverboards. And then maybe in the future we will get hoverboards because we've decided that we want them. Or maybe there's an even cooler future where we get, like, really amazing public transportation. And, you know, we divest from fossil fuels. Right. That's a really cool future that doesn't look kind of as zippy, maybe, on a movie, but would be awesome to have.

Tai Poole: I like this way of thinking about the future. Instead of focusing on the flashy new tech we could have, maybe we can try to imagine what kind of social and political change would make life better for people. So with that in mind, I had to ask Rose what her predictions are.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Now, if we look into the crystal ball together, [Clip of crystal ball sound] but mainly you because I have no idea what I'm doing. And it's like the year 2050 or something like that. You know, 30 years in the future when I'm a big boy adult and I have to pay taxes and do all that. [laughter] What do you see from the research that you've been collecting?

Sound Clip: [Rose Eveleth] Yeah, I'm sure I'll get all of these wrong, which is sort of the fun kind of the kinds of questions. Right. But here's a couple of things I'm thinking about. One of them is around broader cultural acceptance for all different kinds of gender identities. I think that's a very exciting future, that it's sort of like people can identify however they want and that's totally normal. And we're not fighting constantly about who has access to which spaces. So there’s one prediction.

Sound Clip: [Rose Eveleth] And things like football, American football, will not really be popular anymore because the head injury risk is so high and it becomes clear to people that, you know, this isn't really worth subjecting folks to. It won’t go away completely, but it'll be more like boxing is today. So boxing used to be super popular. And today it's - there's people who watch it, but it's not nearly as popular as it used to be, in part because I think people sort of feel a little bit weird about the brutality of the sport. And there are people now who believe that football will kind of go the same way. Eventually we'll kind of be like, "Oh, we don't feel great about watching this. This is like, you know, a bunch of people giving each other head injuries all the time," you know, and all that stuff. So, yeah. That's my out there prediction. But I stand by it.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] When that happens, everyone is going to be pointing at you saying, "Oh, she's a witch. She predicted our future. You killed football."

Sound Clip: [Rose Eveleth] I killed football. [laughter] Yes, exactly.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Historically, were people always trying to predict the future?

Sound Clip: [Rose Eveleth] Yes, I think so. I mean, there's a lot of history around trying to think about what's going to happen, whether that's in the context of astrology, looking at the stars, [Clip of instrumental music] mapping them, seeing that they're moving in certain ways and maybe starting to figure out whether that can help you understand what's going to happen next. You have a lot of religious context here where lots of times, you know, we're talking about things like what's going to happen when I die. So a lot of religion has to do with thinking about the future. So I think it's always been with us and it sort of pops up in various forms. Right? A futurologist like me sort of is part of a very long tradition. Even before there were things like futurists, you had people who were trend forecasters, right, who were trying to figure out what people were going to buy. And that's sort of a form of thinking about the future too. So there's all different ways that this pops up through history.

[Clip of instrumental music]

Tai Poole: One of the ways that forecasting pops up these days is with sports. We don't really watch a ton of sports in my house, but I have friends who do. And I know that in the world of sports, it's all about looking forward and predicting the future. That's how plays are made and games are won. But how do you even do that?

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Hello, is this Tim?

Sound Clip: [Tim Chartier] Yes, this is Tim.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] I hear you use some sort of like magic to predict the future. How do you do that?

Sound Clip: [Tim Chartier] [laughter] Well, yeah, sometimes math can feel like magic. And in that sense, I agree.

Tai Poole: That’s Tim Chartier. Tim’s a math and computer science professor at Davidson College, and his specialty is in sports analytics. He’s worked with the NBA and the US Olympics Committee, but his claim to fame is using something called bracketology to predict the future. Oooo, spooky.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Now, what is bracketology?

Sound Clip: [Tim Chartier] In the United States, we have March Madness, which is the NCAA men's basketball tournament. And on Selection Sunday, they tell us who the first matchups will be. And from there, you have a bracket.

Tai Poole: Bracket is just like a sports term for prediction. It’s a guess about who’s going to win.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] So, when I have two strong opponents - now, forgive me, I'm going to make up these team names. But like the Boston Ballers and the California Catchers, how would you use all of this data to figure out who's going to win the game?

Sound Clip: [Tim Chartier] There are a couple ways to go about that. But we actually create a ranking. So, we're trying to rank all the teams. So, in the league that the Boston Ballers are playing in, it would just depend on how many teams there are. And we'd use all the games up to that moment and figure out who's number one, who's number two, number three. And then we'd look at the relative place of those two teams in a purely mathematical prediction. The higher or better ranked team would be predicted to win.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Now, what kind of data are you collecting when you rank these teams?

Sound Clip: [Tim Chartier] We actually use surprisingly little information. All we use is the date of the game, the teams, the score, and then who played at home and away. That’s all actually we use for March Madness.

Tai Poole: It’s honestly amazing how Tim and his students can make such reliable predictions with such little information.

Sound Clip: [Tim Chartier] But if you have a coin that will come up heads 99% of the time, it doesn't mean that it will come up heads every time. So, you may make, really in many ways, the right prediction in terms of the best choice, but it doesn't mean that you'll be right. Even with millions, literally, like last year, I think it was 15 million brackets submitted to ESPN. Nobody was perfect. And year after year after year, people are not perfect in their brackets because of the randomness of sports.

Tai Poole: Never underestimate the power of randomness.

Sound Clip: [Tim Chartier] I teach this in class [laughter] and I always laugh. You'll see the ball, [Clip of people playing basketball] it's tied, and there's two seconds left. And the ball bounces around the rim and then it either goes in or it doesn't. [Clip of crowd cheering] And then some student will be like, "I got the prediction right." And it's true. But sometimes I'm like, "I think that had more to do with randomness than anything else." When it comes down to a ball bouncing around a rim, I'm not sure that the mathematics is taking hold at that point.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Honestly, I really like that. And yeah, no matter how high the chances, there's always the underdog story. Because there's this amount of randomness, do you really strive for a perfect score? Or do you just strive for a score being, like, this is what team should win, but anything can happen? Does that make sense?

Sound Clip: [Tim Chartier] What you just said is actually exactly what we need people to understand, is that you're trying to make better predictions, but you're not focused on making 100% accurate predictions, because the whole point of randomness is it's not predictable. Occasionally you'll get it and occasionally you won't. And that's just expected and not a problem.

Tai Poole: I like the way Tim approaches the future. He tries to get as much hard data as possible and then just lets the math do the work. But this randomness thing is kind of a big problem. Tim will never be able to get 100% certainty about his predictions because there’s always this tiny chance that like a bolt of lightning could hit the basketball stadium or one of the players could get food poisoning. There’s just too many factors at play for him to ever really be sure. But not all mathematicians share this idea. I also talked to this guy called Satyan Devadoss. He’s a professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of San Diego. And he’s confident that he can deliver 100% accurate predictions.

Sound Clip: [Satyan Devadoss] You know, you give me any triangle you can think of. I'm not even looking at you. I don't know what's in front of you. And I'm not - I have no way of knowing the triangle you're going to draw on a piece of paper in front of you. But, Tai, I can predict with 100% accuracy the future and tell you that the triangle that you're drawing, the angles are all going to add up to 180 degrees. That's cool, isn't it? Like, I could give you a perfect thing. It's not 20% right. It's not 95% right. It's 100% right that the angles of the triangle that you draw are going to add up to 180 degrees. And to me, that's what math is all about. Right. Statistics gives you really good guesses on hard problems. But math gives you perfect answers.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] I’m like scrambling around for paper, I mean, you've opened this crazy rabbit hole. Like, I'm going to spend all night trying to draw the perfect triangle that's like 181 degrees.

Sound Clip: [Satyan Devadoss] Yeah, the catch is it doesn't exist because in math we've proven - we've proven without a shadow of a doubt - standing on logic and logic and logic and logic before that, that any triangle in the world, no matter what, will always add up to 180 degrees.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Of course, I love both statisticians and mathematicians. But statisticians try to be like realists, while mathematicians like to be perfectionists. They really want, like, certainty.

Sound Clip: [Satyan Devadoss] Exactly, my friend. In fact, statisticians want certainty, too, but they can't get it because they're dealing with really complicated things. The complexity of being a human and what it means to live your life is something they're dealing with. And that's why they can't get perfection. They want perfection, but they can't get it because it's too hard. In math, you know what I'm dealing with? I'm dealing with the simplest things, man. I'm dealing with a triangle. I'm dealing with like the number seven and the number 28.

Tai Poole: See, this is why I love math. It’s just so clean and precise. For something complex like, "Who’s going to win the basketball game,” we might never get a sure answer. But no matter what anyone says or does, the angles in a triangle will still add up to 180 degrees. Even in a thousand years. In a way, that is kind of predicting the future. And that's quite nice. We can rely on that at least, you know? But then Satyan gave me another example that kind of messed with my brain a little bit.

Sound Clip: [Satyan Devadoss] And this problem is one of my favorite problems ever, because it is about predicting the future of the life of a number. You give me any whole number you want. And here are the rules. If the number's an even number, I'm going to divide it by two. Alright, so like if you give me the number 10, I'd cut it up into five. Now if you give me an odd number, I’m going to multiply it by three and add one. Tai, is that cool man?

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] It’s a little hard to understand but I’m getting there. [breathing heavy]

Sound Clip: [Satyan Devadoss] It’s a weird rule, right, but let me give you an example, right. Like, six is an even number, right? So, if I give you six, you would then give back to me the new number three, because it's half of that. Is that cool?

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Yep. I’m following.

Sound Clip: [Satyan Devadoss] But if I give you three, because now I know three is odd. Well, then if it's an odd number, you multiply it by three and add one. So what's three time three?

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] We get nine.

Sound Clip: [Satyan Devadoss] Nine. And then add one is?

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Ten.

Sound Clip: [Satyan Devadoss] Perfect. So, six becomes three because the even gets cut in half. And an odd number like three gets multiplied by three and add one and it becomes 10.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Yep.

Sound Clip: [Satyan Devadoss] Now, 10, is 10 even or odd?

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] 10's even, so you divide it by two.

Sound Clip: [Satyan Devadoss] So it becomes five, right? And then what's five times three?

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] 15, and then you add one to get 16.

Sound Clip: [Satyan Devadoss] You got it. Now, you totally got it. Sixteen is even, so you cut it into two and you get eight. And eight is even, and you cut that into two and you get four. And four is even, so you cut that into two and you get two. And two is even, and you cut that into two and you get one. Right. So we started with six. Do you remember that? And that became three to ten to five to sixteen to eight to four to two to one. And that is the life of six. Of that number six. Its future is that eventually it's going to become one. Does that make sense, man? And if it gets to one, you stop. That's when the number kind of dies. OK? And here's my question for you. Can you think of a number whose future is not one?

Sound Clip: [Satyan Devadoss] This is one of the biggest unsolved problems in all of math. Nobody knows the answer to this thing. Every number we're trying is becoming one. No matter what number you give me, no matter what whole number you give me, it eventually - its future becomes one. But we don't know if there's a magic number out there whose future is not one. We don't know if there’s a mystery number, we don’t know why it’s working. In fact, experts think this problem is so hard that it belongs in the 22nd century.

Tai Poole: Whoa, that’s crazy! It seems like it’s such a simple number problem, but we still haven’t come up with an answer. And since there’s an infinite number of numbers, we could be here for a while.

Sound Clip: [Satyan Devadoss] Exactly, man! And so, that's what I want to tell you, is like, if you want perfection, if you want exactly to know what's going on. If you want to know 100% accuracy, even something like multiplying and dividing and adding by one, takes you to the edge of knowledge, takes you to somewhere where nobody knows the answer about the future yet.

Tai Poole: Oh, that is kind of weird to wrap my head around. I mean, math is really comforting with its accuracy, but getting that accuracy can take a lot of time and effort. Like, it might be centuries before mathematicians like Satyan solve that problem. So, it seems like getting 100% predictions for how my life might turn out is probably a long shot. And it’s funny, actually, I was talking to my brother Kien about all of this and he kind of made me rethink wanting to know the future at all.

Sound Clip: [Kien Poole] Yeah, I think seeing the future could be pretty cool. But I also think it could get annoying because I like my life full of mysteries. I'd like to know if I get something in a video game. But something big in my life, like, I'm thinking I might get married when I grow up. I don't want to know that. I don't want to know if I have kids. If I have them what gender they are because that is gonna be one of the biggest parts of my life. My children, if I have them. Or my wife, if I get one. Or boyfriend, if I get one. I just need to know the small things, but the big things I just - I want to experience them myself.

Tai Poole: Yeah. I guess if you know what’s going to happen it does kind of take the surprise out of life.

Sound Clip: [Tim Chartier] Part of the reason that we watch sports is that you just don't know what's going to happen.

Tai Poole: Tim, the sports analyst, agrees with Kien. Even though he spends his whole life trying to predict these games, he says the not knowing is actually the fun part.

Sound Clip: [Tim Chartier] There is still the randomness of life. And just like we enjoy watching sports, I believe that when you are reminded that there is randomness in life, that's part of the joy of living life. And also why we need to be forgiving on ourselves, because sometimes we really do make good decisions, but we just don't know how things are going to play out.

Tai Poole: I don’t know if I'm there yet. I haven’t quite found the joy in the randomness that was the year 2020. But Rose told me that she knows how I feel, and she actually had some practical advice for my situation.

Sound Clip: [Rose Eveleth] Sometimes it feels like we have no say over what's going to happen tomorrow. Right? It can feel so overwhelming and if you get stuck in a certain loop, you know, when you're like, "Oh, no, what's gonna happen? Oh, no, what's going to happen?" That can be bad.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] I totally feel that. I'm going into high school in - oh, my god - I'm going to high school in a month. Eugh. I'm pretty chill about it in the grand scheme of things. But I know sometimes I'll get calls from my friends being like, "Oh my god, I'm freaking out. I have high school." Right?

Sound Clip: [Rose Eveleth] Yeah. And the first step, I would say, you know, if you or your friends are feeling freaked out about the future in the short term or long term is (A) to say that that's totally normal and fair. Even if you are entering high school when there isn't a pandemic happening, high school is terrifying. It's also great, and you'll have a great time. But thinking about what you can do, sort of, right now and plan for what you can do, researchers call it mental time travel, which I think is very funny. But mental time travel is something that is shown to be associated with being happier, with being less anxious, with being healthier.

Sound Clip: [Rose Eveleth] So people who have depression, for example, have a really hard time picturing even tomorrow or picturing sort of a future that is different from today. And if you can get folks to kind of walk through even just very basic thinking about what you're going to do next and sort of planning out your next future steps and doing that mental time travel, it actually does increase happiness. That's really the first step in all of this, right? Whether it's high school, whether it's climate change, whether it's, you know, cultural changes you want to have happen. Figuring out a plan of action and sort of the exact places where you can do something about it is the way to kind of handle a lot of that fear.

Sound Clip: [Tai Poole] Oh, my god. I need to just give them your number, like you're going to talk for, like, 15 seconds, and they're just going to calm down. You know, they’ll just start throwing money at you.

Sound Clip: [Rose Eveleth] [laughter] Yeah, have them call me.

Tai Poole: So unless my future involves a lot of triangles, there’s probably no way that I can predict with 100% accuracy what’s going to happen to me. None of us can. But the interesting thing is that even though COVID seemed to come out of nowhere, and like it changed everything, a lot of scientists did predict that a virus like COVID was basically around the corner. So, we should really trust the scientists.

And what I can do for my own life is what Rose said, imagine the kind of future I want and then just work step by step to make it happen. And, yeah, I guess that randomness will always be there to shake things up, you know? But, hey, who doesn’t love a bit chaos?

[Clip of “Tai Asks Why Theme Music” by Johnny Spence]

Tai Poole: Thank you, guys, so much for listening. I'm Tai Poole. This show was produced by Amanda Buckiewicz and Judy Ziyi Gu. Judy’s also our digital producer. This podcast was created by Veronica Simmonds, and she is also our editor and sound designer. The theme music is by Johnny Spence. Sound engineer is my pa, Minh Nguyen, and our location manager is my ma, Nicky Poole. Thanks, guys, for letting me turn your closet into my podcast studio. Today, my guests were Rose Eveleth, Tim Chartier, and Satyan Devadoss. Rose makes podcasts. You can go listen to them on Flash Forward Presents. And Satyan’s new book is called “Mage Merlin's Unsolved Mathematical Mysteries”, which I’ve already devoured, you guys gotta check it out. Our senior producer is Tina Verma and Executive Producer of CBC Podcasts is Arif Noorani. Well, I'm sorry to say it, but that was actually the last episode of the season. Who knows what the future holds? But, until then, I'm Tai, keep asking why.

Transcript: Tai Asks Why - Season 3: Is It Possible To Tell The Future?

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