by Ryota Ono
Introduction
Self-fulfilling prophesy explains one truth about a prediction. If you keep paying attention to a certain condition of something in the future, the chance of its becoming true increases regardless of whether the condition is good or bad. Referring to the condition of the future, Bell states that the purpose of futures studies is to make a better future (1997, p.73). I fully agree with this and I would like to contribute my effort in the futures field to achieve the goal. Given the perspective of self-fulfilling prophesy and the purpose of futures studies, I am reluctant to estimate probabilities for negative scenarios. Although I don’t avoid imagining negative futures in addition to positive futures, I can’t see any merit of assigning some probabilities to negative futures. Doing so might even make self-fulfilling prophesy work in a negative way.(continue…)