I would like to quote one paragraph from the article on the importance of scenarios, as I have had a commentater on this blog who seemed to think one scenario was sufficient:
"In the police academy, I was taught to prepare myself ahead of time by playing the “What If” game. Any good cop plays this game every chance he gets. He thinks up a possible scenario that could go wrong then comes up with some specific solutions. He comes up with as many scenarios as he can imagine along with the proper reaction, then goes over them time and time and time again."This is why I will highlight as many different possible future scenarios as I can think of.
Maybe.
ReplyDeleteBut I think that the enormous number of scenarios tends to diffuse the effort.
More effort should be spent on historical scenarios (wars, drought-famine, social cycles, resource depletion) rather than more speculative fair.
The historical scenarios are disasterous enough : 90% death rate.
Many of the solutions (bugging out) doesn't actually fit many of the historical problems well at all.
Excellent point! I should have referenced my previous post on "Orthogonality" http://goingupslope.blogspot.com/2012/07/orthogonality.html Yes, an enormous number of scenarios IS counterproductive. What I'm looking for are scenarios that are Truly Different. The point is not to choose what is most likely (although that is an excellent place to start), the point is to challenge your assumptions so you don't end up thinking for example that bugging out is automatically the proper response. And while there probably is never going to be a Zombie Apocalypse, you might want to treat an outbreak of a super-virulent strain of rabies the same way.
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