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Can someone with only 6 years of experience make credible predictions about things 20 years in the future?

I'm around 15 years of experience, and my appreciation for my own lack of knowledge and ability to make predictions still grows with every year.




I’ll bite on the above loaded question: Define experience. However you do, it should at least include work, education, and life in general, given that such experiences relate to the context or situation.


Yeah, it was a bit snarky, but still an honest question. In some domains, like astronomy or geology or climate change, I guess it seems reasonable to make predictions 100 or 1,000 years in the future based on available data rather than experience. In other domains, like politics or economics or finance, it seems like there would be much more value in having worked through a bunch of election and business cycles over the years. I'm not sure where computing and AI sits on that spectrum. I can imagine a young AI researcher failing to realize that some approach was tried and found to be a dead-end 30 years ago.

On the definition of experience, I agree that education and life experience counts. I said "around 15" years for myself because the definition is fuzzy. I got some very specific career preparation and training in college, so that sort of counts, and I probably spend more personal time than many of my peers learning about relevant history and current events.




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