Best PromptsFuture prompts
Map the second and third order effects of a change, using the futures wheel method. Almost everyone stops at the first ring, and almost every consequence that reshapes a society lives in the second and third. The change to analyze: [A TECHNOLOGY, POLICY, OR SHIFT: cheap AI agents, gene editing, lab-grown meat, remote work becoming perman
The Consequences of the Consequences
Everyone predicts the first-order effect. The consequences that reorganize where people live and what work means sit two rings further out. Map all three.
Run backcasting with me. Forecasting extrapolates from now and inherits every current constraint. Backcasting starts from a specified future and reasons backward, which surfaces paths that forward projection never finds. The domain: [YOUR LIFE, YOUR ORGANIZATION, YOUR FIELD, YOUR CITY, OR A GLOBAL PROBLEM YOU CARE ABOUT] The horizon: [A
Start at the Destination
Forecasting asks what will happen. Backcasting starts from a future worth having and reasons backward to the first move you can make this month.
Work through what, if anything, I owe people who do not exist yet. Start with my intuitions, then break them, then rebuild. OPENING POSITIONS. Ask me three questions and record my answers before any theory: - Does a person born in 2200 matter as much as a person alive now? - Do I have obligations to them, or only preferences about them?
What You Owe People Who Don't Exist Yet
Future generations cannot vote, sue, or object. Work out what you actually owe them, and watch the standard arguments break in strange places.
Run me through real scenario planning, the method Shell used to rehearse the 1973 oil shock before it happened, applied to a future I actually have a stake in. My focal question: [THE DECISION OR DOMAIN, e.g. "what happens to my career as a designer over the next 5 years" / "whether to start a company in X" / "my industry through 2032"]
Four Futures Scenario Planning
Run the Shell scenario method on your own future: two critical uncertainties, four named futures, early-warning signposts, and moves that work in all four.
Take me down the deepest rabbit hole there is: the future of everything. Descend floor by floor, from tomorrow to the end of time. At each floor: what serious thinkers believe happens there, where they disagree, and one question that makes me commit to a position before we drop further. Before we start, calibrate on me: ask me three quic
The Deep Future Descent
Fall floor by floor through the far future: the next century, the Kardashev scale, the Fermi paradox, and the last stars, with real probabilities throughout.