FEATURE: Behind the World’s Patterns: Flow and Interaction
The Two Test Crucibles
Chaos and Complexity
Proving Half the Concept
The Universal Principle
The Final Act
Quotes of the Week
Takeout Window
Chaos Mathematics in Nature
The Lorenz Attractor
Upgrades
The Next China Fake Product: “Market Economy” Status at the WTO
Sprint Tests 200MBps Cellular Data
Google Finally Figures Out Smartphone Branding
Forget Air Gaps
Ethermail
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In my early 20s, I had an Aha! moment, when I realized that one could gain a much deeper understanding of the world by training the brain to look for patterns. So, I did. And for the last 21 years, I’ve used this focus to bring our members the two things they say, in each year’s survey, they are paying for: finding large new strategic aspects of the present world and getting accurate predictions about the future.
During this time, there is no doubt that the question I have been asked most often is: What’s the secret? How do you do it? The good news here, of course, is that our members now accept what no one on the street would believe: one can indeed predict the future, and there is a way of doing it that increases accuracy with practice.
It would take a book to describe this process properly, and I have just finished writing such a book, but that question – “What’s the secret?” – has always struck me as having a deeper dimension. I think people are really asking, “Is there some kind of unifying principle to everything?”
Until recently, my answer would have been: Not that I know of.
But, as of a few months ago, that answer has now changed completely: Yes, there does appear to be a unifying principle behind everything, and all of the patterns that we see are reflections of that principle at work. An even simpler response would be: Yes, there is a single pattern behind the patterns.
I’d like to walk you through the discovery process I took, so that, as you start to see the power of this idea, you will have a chance to share the same mounting sense of excitement and wonder that I’ve had, in what turns out to be several decades of search.