Geoffrey Hinton Quotes

Humans are terrible at predicting the future. We really overestimate what we can do in the short term and underestimate what we can do in the long term... If we can glimpse even a couple of years into the future, even that's difficult to do.

Allow me to inquire how man can control his own affairs when he is not only incapable of compiling a plan for some laughably short term such as, say, a thousand years, but cannot even predict what will happen to him tomorrow?

No one ever thinks about what the hell is going to happen 25 years from now.

I find that predicting the course of our lives is like predicting the weather. You might be able to predict your future in the short term, but the longer you look ahead, the less likely you are to be correct.

How can you make sense of the future when you only have data about the past?

People often say that it is easier to predict the way things are going to be 10 to 20 years in the future than to predict how it is going to be 3 years from now.

I never quite trust futurists because I think they're kind of telling us what they think our future should be.

When you believe you have a future, you think in terms of generations and years. When you do not, you live not just by the day — but by the minute.

How do Ferrari know what I'm doing next year when I don't know what I'm doing next week?

It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all.

It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.

Forecasting our futures is built into our psyches because we will soon have to manage that future. We have no choice. No matter how often we fail, we can never stop trying.

As a player I think you naturally think long term and think what is the schedule in the next year or so.

In order to be in control, you have to have a definite plan for at least a reasonable period of time. So how, may I ask, can man be in control if he can't even draw up a plan for a ridiculously short period of time, say, a thousand years, and is, moreover, unable to ensure his own safety for even the next day?

We cannot accomplish as much as we think we can in one day and we can accomplish more than we think we can in a year. Isn't that true?

I do not like to talk about the future. I don't like to be one of those people. It's so easy to have a very vague idea and say, oh, computers will be 3D-ish and then 10 years later I'll say I predicted it 10 years ahead. I don't think that's honest and I don't think that's valid and worth anything.

Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future.

It's tough to say, exactly, what things will look like in three to five years, but there's a lot of work to do in just moving along the path that we've already set out.

To understand the difficulty of predicting the next 100 years, we have to appreciate the difficulty that the people of 1900 had in predicting the world of 2000.

Consider the bigger picture.....think things through and fully commit!

Prediction is difficult - particularly when it involves the future.

People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten.

What's the point of thinking about how it's going to end when it's just the beginning?

My job is to think beyond the immediate.

Forecasting is very difficult, especially when it involves the future.