Experts can be the worst predictors

A few years later, a graduate student in the then new subject of environmental science explained to me that colour television was a sign of the imminent collapse of our ‘consumer society’. Why? Because, first of all, he said, it served no useful purpose. All the useful functions of television could be performed just as well in monochrome. Adding colour, at several times the cost, was merely ‘conspicuous consumption’. That term had been coined by the economist Thorstein Veblen in 1902, a couple of decades before even monochrome television was invented; it meant wanting new possessions in order to show off to the neighbours. That we had now reached the physical limit of conspicuous consumption could be proved, said my colleague, by analysing the resource constraints scientifically. The cathode-ray tubes in colour televisions depended on the element europium to make the red phosphors on the screen. Europium is one of the rarest elements on Earth. The planet’s total known reserves were only enough to build a few hundred million more colour televisions. After that, it would be back to monochrome. But worse – think what this would mean. From then on there would be two kinds of people: those with colour televisions and those without. And the same would be true of everything else that was being consumed. It would be a world with permanent class distinction, in which the elites would hoard the last of the resources and live lives of gaudy display, while, to sustain that illusory state through its final years, everyone else would be labouring on in drab resentment. And so it went on, nightmare built upon nightmare.

I asked him how he knew that no new source of europium would be discovered. He asked how I knew that it would. And, even if it were, what would we do then? I asked how he knew that colour cathode-ray tubes could not be built without europium. He assured me that they could not: it was a miracle that there existed even one element with the necessary properties. After all, why should nature supply elements with properties to suit our convenience?

…

He was right in one respect: no alternative red phosphor has been discovered to this day. Yet, as I write this chapter, I see before me a superbly coloured computer display that contains not one atom of europium. Its pixels are liquid crystals consisting entirely of common elements, and it does not require a cathode-ray tube. Nor would it matter if it did, for by now enough europium has been mined to supply every human being on earth with a dozen europium-type screens, and the known reserves of the element comprise several times that amount. Beginning of infinity, David Deutsch

It’s a paradox: the people who know a field best are often the worst at predicting its future. Why? Because they’re too familiar with the current constraints. Take color TV again. Industry veterans knew exactly why it wouldn’t work:

• “The picture quality isn’t much better.” (They were judging prototypes, not the potential.)
• “We’ll run out of europium.” (As if we wouldn’t find alternatives or new sources.)
• “It’s just a luxury.” (Ignoring how technology trickles down.)
• “Only the rich will have it.” (Forgetting how mass production works.)
• “It’ll crash the economy.” (A bit dramatic, no?)
• “We can’t control where this goes.” (Underestimating human ingenuity.)

These weren’t dumb people. They were experts. But their expertise blinded them. Real breakthroughs don’t just push against constraints - they obliterate them. They rewrite the rules of what’s possible. But to see that, you need to think beyond current limitations.

Experts focus on optimizing within known constraints. That’s valuable for incremental progress. But it’s terrible for predicting revolutions. The most transformative innovations often come from outsiders or young upstarts. They’re naive enough to ask “Why not?” instead of listing all the reasons why not.

This doesn’t mean ignore physics or fundamental limitations. But most “impossibilities” aren’t laws of nature - they’re just the current state of knowledge or technology. Remember, at one point, these were all declared “impossible” by experts:

1. Heavier-than-air flight
2. Breaking the 4-minute mile
3. Reusable rockets
4. Practical electric cars

In each case, someone looked at the “insurmountable” constraints and found a way around them. Not by violating physics, but by approaching the problem from a completely new angle. So next time an expert tells you something’s impossible, ask yourself:

Is this truly a law of physics, or just a current limitation? What assumptions are baked into this “impossibility”? If those assumptions changed, what would be possible?

The future belongs to those who can imagine beyond current constraints. Don’t let expertise become a straitjacket for your imagination. The most exciting innovations are always “impossible” - right up until they’re not.

...

But all triumphs are temporary. So to use this fact to reinterpret progress as ‘so-called progress’ is bad philosophy. The fact that reliance on specific antibiotics is unsustainable is only an indictment from the point of view of someone who expects a sustainable lifestyle. But in reality there is no such thing. Only progress is sustainable. … Trying to predict what our net effect on the environment will be for the next century and then subordinating all policy decisions to optimizing that prediction cannot work. We cannot know how much to reduce emissions by, nor how much effect that will have, because we cannot know the future discoveries that will make some of our present actions seem wise, some counter-productive and some irrelevant, nor how much our efforts are going to be assisted or impeded by sheer luck. Tactics to delay the onset of foreseeable problems may help. But they cannot replace, and must be subordinate to, increasing our ability to intervene after events turn out as we did not foresee. If that does not happen in regard to carbon-dioxide-induced warming, it will happen with something else. … Strategies to prevent foreseeable disasters are bound to fail eventually, and cannot even address the unforeseeable. To prepare for those, we need rapid progress in science and technology and as much wealth as possible. Beginning of infinity, David Deutsch

However, this is not to say that we can eliminiate problems for good. We solve one, and two more appear in its place. It’s like a game of whack-a-mole, but on a cosmic scale.

But that’s not bad news. It’s how progress happens.

The mistake people make is thinking there’s some final boss level where we defeat all problems forever. That’s not just impossible — it’s undesirable. A world without challenges is stasis, not utopia. It would be a world like the Brave New World. What we should be doing instead is leveling up our problem-solving skills. Better science. Cooler tech. Smarter thinking. We can’t see around every corner, but we can get better at dealing with whatever’s waiting there. Progress isn’t the threat — it’s our best shot at staying afloat.