How to Predict the Future: The Law of Complexification is Science's Crystal Ball

If human civilization is similar to a "global brain" that is predictably becoming more complex, diverse, and integrated, then technological progress is semi-predictable.

Could a scientific theory be used to predict technological developments and global events? If such a thing were possible, then it would provide us with something like a “crystal ball,” transforming an average person with knowledge of that theory into something like a “seer” with seemingly supernatural powers. In this article, I’m going to argue that the Unifying Theory of Reality that has been proposed on this Substack has such predictive power, and that this predictive ability could conceivably put you at an advantage in life — if you are willing to do the research, and if you are willing to take some risks.

This predictive power comes from the idea that the universe is on a developmental trajectory of increasing complexity and integration — that is, it is a self-organizing system — and this trend of “complexification” also applies to the evolution of human civilization. This suggests a continual advancement in technological progress, and this is especially true for technology that connects us through information exchange channels, like the Internet, social media, and blockchain. If the interconnected network of organisms that we call a biosphere is evolving toward higher complexity and integration, technology that connects us all is favored by the intrinsic dynamics of the evolutionary process.

If you are skeptical, that’s a good sign, because one rule is that there is always an exception to the rule. Progress is not a straight march, but a statistical trend with frequent reversals and the occasional anomalous event. This is because evolution works through trial-and-error testing, and self-organization is a noisy process that utilizes chaos and randomness.

However, underneath this facade of chaos lies unwavering long-term trends, laws, and principles that create a predictable path for humanity, clear to those scientists and philosophers from the past who envisioned it to be a developing holistic system similar to an organism or a brain. For example, a century ago, Nichola Tesla basically predicted smart phones, based on the idea that the planetary system was something like a “huge brain” whose component parts were becoming increasingly interconnected. This shockingly prophetic quote comes from a 1926 interview in Collier Magazine:

"When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.”

Pretty wild, huh?

At the other end of the spectrum, there are predictions that were embarrassingly wrong, that wouldn’t have been made if that person had a theory of progressive evolution that propels life toward higher complexity and integration. My favorite example of this comes from the Nobel Prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman, who in 1998 wrote that:

"The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in 'Metcalfe's law' — which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants — becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's."

I don’t think he’ll ever live that one down. What I find ironic about this bad prediction is that it was made not long after Krugman wrote a book called the “self-organizing economy,” which viewed the network of humans on Earth to be a self-organizing system. I suppose that you can see human civilization as a self-organizing system without recognizing that it is continuously growing more complex and interconnected, if you believe that it for some reason has reached the pinnacle of its complexity. But I have no idea why anyone would make that assumption. If he had Teilhard de Chardin’s vision of the noosphere, which we will discuss more below, he would have realized that the Internet was a crucial part of the ongoing self-organization process.

Of course, the theory of progressive evolution outlined on this Substack won’t tell you what magic stocks or cryptocurrencies to buy, so it won’t make you a millionaire over night. Let me say up front that this article should not be taken as financial advice! However, the paradigm does suggest that the Internet, social media, AI, and blockchain as a whole are essentially destined to continuously grow in power and popularity. For those looking to use the self-organizing universe theory as an investment strategy, I would exercise caution based on the following examples.

When the Internet first became popular, AOL was the leading service provider, though that name will be unrecognizable to Gen Z. Those older than 35 may remember a time before Google when Yahoo was the leading search engine. Similarly, Friendster and Myspace came before Facebook and Instagram, but were simply not the “fittest” realizations of the technology. So, while this new paradigm does have predictive power, that power is limited. At the same time, the theory’s future forecasting utility can’t be denied, and if a full-blown science of predicting the future was based on it, I believe it could prove to be far more revealing than we have yet to imagine. Any billionaire or multi-millionaire who was betting big on the Internet and social media in general, because they saw that they were technologies that increased human interconnection, likely made a killing.

In this article, we will explore the concepts put forth by three visionary thinkers who recognized the progressive nature of evolution and the associated growth of complexity and integration: Teilhard de Chardin’s law of complexificiation, Valentine Turchin’s metasystem transition theory, and Ray Kurzweil’s law of accelerating returns.