Compendiums Thinking about the future
Thinking about the future
Guides, courses, long-run data and forecasting tools for reasoning about what may come next.
20 resources, read at their own pages, most recently on 2026-10-21. Licences are given as each page states them. Links last checked 2026-10-23, all reached.
Guides
Long Now Talks
The Long Now Foundation
Listen to or watch recorded talks on long-term thinking from a lecture series that has hosted more than 400 speakers.
How to Become a Superforecaster
Good Judgment Inc.
Read how the Good Judgment Project found its most accurate forecasters and what training and teamwork did to their accuracy.
AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Read or download the IPCC's Summary for Policymakers, headline statements, longer report and figures on climate change and possible futures.
Strategic Foresight Toolkit for Resilient Public Policy
OECD Strategic Foresight Unit
Download a 2025 toolkit that works through 25 possible disruptions between 2030 and 2050 with a five-step method for testing policy against them.
Futures Toolkit
UK Government Office for Science
Use a 2024 set of futures tools, as a web page or a 117-page PDF, for building long-term thinking into policy and strategy work.
A policy toolkit for policy decision-makers
School of International Futures (SOIF)
Download a toolkit of foresight tools and approaches for decision-makers working under deep uncertainty.
Problem profiles
80,000 Hours
Read write-ups on large long-term problems such as loss of control of AI, engineered pandemics, great power conflict and climate change.
Forecasting Research Institute
Forecasting Research Institute
Read research reports and working papers on forecasting accuracy, including expert panels on AI progress and the Existential Risk Persuasion Tournament.
Courses
Futures Thinking Specialization
Institute for the Future, on Coursera
Take a five-course beginner series on Institute for the Future foresight methods, taught by Jane McGonigal, ending with a futures project on a topic you choose.
Teach the Future Library
Teach the Future
Find futures-thinking lesson plans, activity sheets, playbooks and courses for primary school through university.
Data and measurements
Our World in Data
Our World in Data
Explore more than 14,000 charts of long-run trends in population, health, energy, poverty, food, education and democracy, and download the data behind them.
Trends in AI
Epoch AI
See measured growth rates for AI training compute, chip stocks, data centres, hardware cost and capabilities, with the datasets behind them.
Gapminder
Gapminder Foundation
Test your picture of global trends with short quizzes, then correct it with charts and teaching material on poverty, health, population and more.
Tools
Long Bets
The Long Now Foundation
Read long-range predictions and bets on the public record, with each side's argument and how resolved bets turned out.
Metaculus
Metaculus
Forecast open questions on science, technology, geopolitics and the economy, and compare your forecasts with the community estimate.
Good Judgment Open
Good Judgment Inc.
Make forecasts on current-events questions and see how your accuracy compares with other forecasters over time.
Calibrate Your Judgment
Clearer Thinking
Practise putting confidence levels on thousands of question sets and track how well calibrated you become over time.
Manifold
Manifold Markets, Inc.
Trade on prediction markets about any topic using play money, or create a market for a question you care about.
Fatebook
Sage Future Inc.
Record your own predictions, resolve them later and see how calibrated you are, with links to calibration games and practice on past events.
Documented practices
Futures Literacy
UNESCO
Read how UNESCO runs Futures Literacy Laboratories and watch its video playlists and lecture series on using ideas about the future to rethink present choices.