The role of hindsight in foresight: refining strategic reasoning

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to deepen understanding of the role that hindsight plays in foresight. The authors argue that the past is not an isolated static state, but one that is intimately connected with the future. However, there are several biases that influence our perceptions and conceptions of the past. These biases act as constraints on our ability to understand the driving forces that emerge from the past, play out through the present and become the critical uncertainties in the future. They could result in misperceptions about events or processes and so may impair foresight methodologies, such as scenario thinking. Such a foresight bias is characterized by a combination of hindsight biases, creeping determinism and searching for information that corresponds to people’s views about both the past and the future. The cognitive linkages between past, present and future are discussed and the role of counter-to-factual analysis is emphasized as an antidote to the foresight bias. Counter-to-factual analysis is both a cognitive process and an analytical reasoning tool applied to the analysis of historical data. Using insights generated from the explorations of counter-to-factual reasoning, the authors present a hindsight-foresight paragon that fortifies current foresight enhancing techniques with counter-to-factual analysis. Two Roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood To where it bent in the undergrowth… Two roads diverged in a wood, and I– I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost Men’s curiosity searches past and future And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend The point of intersection of the timeless With time, is an occupation for the saint— T. S. Eliot, from The Dry Salvages