[scientator]

I think he is wrong that predictions 100 years out are almost always going to be wrong, because city and government planners routinely do this kind of stuff. They predict future growth rates and plan accordingly. They invest in reservoirs, wider roads, bigger power plants and transmission lines, etc. Sometimes those predictions are wrong and they build for growth that never happens, or vice versa. But much of the time they get it right and that contributes hugely to our present-day quality of life.

[trescenzi]

Yes exactly. He, and many others, get the causality wrong. The extrapolation is not wrong because extrapolation is always bad but partly because the knowledge spurs people to do something. Moore’s law is a good reverse example of this. It’s not magic, humans invest massively in making it happen.