It’s hard enough for most of us to predict what we’re having for dinner tonight, much less how the world will look in 2100. By that time we might have cured cancer and started building giant space brains. Or maybe we’ll be nothing but batteries for our robot overlords. Or spraying crops with a sports drink.

And yet without such predictions, we can’t envision alternative futures, which motivate us to make better ones possible. Consider climate change. People’s eyes glaze over when you tell them, “Climate change is going to be really bad.” They need to know how bad, exactly. How specifically might it affect me, the protagonist of reality? So scientists and researchers keep delivering these forecasts to them, no matter how many reputational minefields they must traverse on the way.

The risk

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