theDirt’s Dirty Thoughts: Eleven Rules for Guessing the Future
An absurdly philosophical post having little to do with Real Estate but being of enormous importance to The Future... maybe. Enjoy if you dare!
I am someone who obsesses thinks deeply about philosophical concepts like The Future. I believe such is a part of being mortal: our life on this earth (as we can conceive of it) is limited. And so time (or lack thereof) is the sword of Damocles hanging ever by a thread over our heads. Time, Dear Reader, is our most precious resource. More precisely, the Future is our most precious resource because that is the only currency we have left to spend!
O Fortuna
Velut luna
Statu variabilis
Semper crescis
Aut decrescis…
O Fortuna, Carmina Burana
As such, it is only natural that We, Humans spend so much of that currency (Time) pondering The Future1. But The Future can only ever be framed by its cousins: The Past and The Present. We gaze ever upon The Past as a guide to The Future (after all, wasn’t The Past once The Future?). And we are forced to rely on what we know about The Past in The Present to decide in preparation for The Future. It’s a real mind bender.
Oh, but for all of our knowledge, for all of our ability, for all of the incredible heights to which which we as a species have soared, The Future still constantly surprises us. It refuses to be fully seen or known. It is always a mystery. To be sure, We, Humans have been trying to bottle The Future since we woke to the idea of Time eons ago. But despite our best tries, The Future remains elusive. It is constantly dancing in our imaginations, enticing us with seductive glimpses, but never letting itself be fully known. And even though it has rhythms, the Future always seems to surprise us with events that we could never foresee; could never possibly guess.
Dear reader, we live in a slightly absurd, contradictory world. To wit: no one can say for sure what the future holds yet we must have some guess of the future to make decisions. One such as Your Humble Author, who obsesses thinks deeply about things like economics and real estate, and despite always protesting that He Knows Nothing!, is constantly guessing at the future. I just can’t help it… and neither can you. In fact, I think it plain that participation in the marketplace necessitates making assumptions and guesses about The Future. I mean c’mon, participation in life requires us to make certain assumptions and guesses about The Future2. No matter how frequently we are proven wrong.
Dear reader, predicting the future in public is a Very Dangerous occupation. The Future has a knack for making the even the smartest of us look like fools. For that reason outlined below, I don’t even like to call it predicting. Predicting has an air of certainty that I do not usually posses (especially as one moves out on the timeline). Therefore I like to call it guessing. Because that is all it is.
And just as human a habit as guessing the future is making mental shortcuts and rules (heuristics) to get you by in life3. And as I just can’t help but venture forth a guess on the future, I figured I’d better record my own, personal rules on guessing The Future. For posterity’s sake and as an ever-green essay to which I might refer later on.
Now I chuckle because the last was a reference to The Future and so is a prediction guess as to what might happen down the road. And I decided to write this entire column in The Present based on experience of The Past in order to prepare for The Future… yep, that is pretty much how it works. Now let’s see if I am correct.
theDirt’s Eleven Rules for Guessing the Future
No one knows the future.
We can’t help but try and guess the future - it pretty much comes with being a human.
The further out in time you try to guess, the greater your likelihood of being wrong.
You will guess wrong a lot of the time. Give yourself a break when you do.
You can be Generally Correct but Specifically Wrong (e.g. the real estate market can be great but you still lost money on an individual investment property).
The only thing you know for sure is that which has already happened (and sometimes even that is suspect - e.g. what we thought we knew for sure that just wasn’t so).
Decisions can only be made with what we know today.
Samuel Clements (Mark Twain) was correct: History does NOT repeat itself. It does, however, rhyme. Which means there are trends, seasons, and cycles in life that make life possible and guessing a reasonable venture (though it doesn’t make it much easier).
There are no straight lines in markets. Nothing lasts forever. This too shall pass.
There are gremlins, black swans, and monsters lurking in all of our timelines (bad news). There are also rainbows, leprechauns, and unicorns (good news). They tend to jump out at you when you least expect.
No one knows the future.
Time is ever on our minds. Time is so important to us that its versions are personified as archetypes in the arts: consider Dicken’s ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. Also Father Time as a subject of painting and mural.
E.g. the sun will rise tomorrow and December will be colder than June in Texas. One can reasonably and safely assume those to be true - the minute those are no longer true is the minute that we are all in trouble.
Ideally one’s rules improve with age and experience.