How To Predict Everything

The Copernican Planisphere, illustrated in 1661 by Andreas Cellarius

Dear reader, The Copernican Principle is named after Nicolaus Copernicus, who proved that the earth is not the centre of the universe. It is the simple idea that your location is not special. The more we further our understanding of astrophysics, the more we begin to understand that the location of our earth is not particularly special. Our home, beautiful as it is, is orbiting an ordinary star in an ordinary galaxy.

Astrophysicist J. Richard Gott III argues that we can predict that our earth is in a non-special place, simply because there are a lot more non-special places than special places in the universe.

The world is a complex place, and predicting the exact outcome of complex and chaotic systems is inherently difficult. It is very difficult, if not nearly impossible, to predict who will be the President of the United States in 100 years’ time. What is easier to predict is that there will indeed be a President of the United States in 100 years’ time.

“As time goes on, you’ll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn’t, doesn’t. Time solves most things. And what time can’t solve, you have to solve yourself.”
– Haruki Murakami

Anything that has persisted for some time is likely to continue to persist. If a book that was written over 100 years ago is still selling today, chances are that it will continue to be sold 10 years from now. On the other hand, a book that is a bestseller today, but that just came out a month ago, may or may not still be popular in 10 years’ time.

The mistake people make is that we always want to believe that we live in special times. When people are asked how long humans will last, most people predicted either than we will be around for either less than 200 years, or that we’ll still be around in 10 million years. Everything wants to believe that we are either at the beginning of things, or that the apocalypse is nigh.

Of course, many people will point to the fact that we live in a time of increasing technological change as evidence of us living in special times. But Gott argues that the Copernican Principle predicts simply that we will be living in a high-population era: by definition, most people will be. Just like most people will come from cities and countries with higher than average populations. People create inventions: and if you live in a time when there are more people, there will be more inventions.

Yours Sincerely,
Henry Chong