Predicting The Collapse of American Society | Jane McGonigal Ep. 690

Jane McGonigal is a futurist who specializes in designing games that challenge players to tackle real-world problems, and is the bestselling author of Reality is Broken and SuperBetter. Her latest book is Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything ― Even Things That Seem Impossible Today.

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Full show notes can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/690

What We Discuss with Jane:
0:00 - Intro
0:06 - Predicting the future is easier than you think
6:15 - Avoiding futureshock, the deterioration of systems
14:27 - Gaming catastrophic situations
17:25 - Temporal distance and the 10 year schedule
32:12 - Using games to predict the future
36:34 - Differentiating future predictions vs conspiracy theories
40:21 - Try this: 100 things for the future exercise
46:21 - The 5 minute thought experiment (what would you do if the government shut down the internet)
54:27 - Using the 10 year rule for positive political change
59:25 - Future families: co-parenting with someone and marrying another
1:02:18 - The origins of futurism
1:05:14 - Pizzly bears & future of human migration
1:08:13 - Why you'll be allergic to red meat in the future
1:13:01 - How the pandemic improved facial recognition surveillance

In his 1970 book Future Shock, Alvin Toffler told us, “in dealing with the future … it is more important to be imaginative and insightful than to be 100 percent right.” That is, we may not be able to predict the future with unfailing accuracy, but we can anticipate potential problems and imagine numerous ways to solve them before they arrive. “There are going to be surprises. There are going to be unanticipated consequences. But if you’re thinking in this more flexible, more resilient way, it doesn’t really matter what the specifics of the change, disruption, or crisis are, because you’ve been preparing yourself mentally to be agile, adaptable, flexible, and resilient,” says Jane McGonigal, returning guest and author of Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything ― Even Things That Seem Impossible Today.

On this episode, Jane joins us to discuss how we can wrap our minds around an uncertain future and develop the ability to be prepared for whatever comes our way. Here, we examine ways to imagine our way out of possible future problems without becoming too wrapped up in doom and gloom, learn how to train ourselves to spot signals of change that give us an edge on foresight, and put a few practicals in our toolkit that allow us to really get a glimpse into how weird and wonderful the future could be — and find our place in it. Listen, learn, and enjoy!

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Welcome to The Jordan Harbinger Show, a video podcast where each week you get to join a conversation with some of the world’s highest performers and incredible personalities. I’ll ask them the tough questions to tease out their top tips so that you can reach levels of personal growth and mastery that you never imagined possible.

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