Future isn’t perfect; be ready to change

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OPINION

By Eng. Godfrey Mutabazi

The virtual world, once a mere expanse of code and circuit, has become the canvas upon which I have discovered the masterpiece of my own soul, thanks to the wonders of technology

A Letter from the future: Everything is predictable—even you

Dear Ancestors,

Greetings from the year 2075, where the improbable is routine and the miraculous is managed by firmware updates and well-behaved neural code. This world may seem alien to you, but trust me, it has been a long, probabilistic road paved with data, dreams, and belief in the power of reason.

You may remember a book from your time: Everything is Predictable by Tom Chivers, about a one-time non-conformist and frustrated Church of England reverend, Thomas Bayes.

The Church of England punished him by sending him to the University of Edinburgh instead of Cambridge as a punishment.

In it, Chivers introduced the everyday magic of Bayes' Theorem, a deceptively simple formula that helps you revise your beliefs in light of new evidence. It is not just about numbers, it is a worldview. It is about becoming wiser with every new experience, rather than clinging to outdated assumptions. Here, in 2075, we don't just use Bayes' Theorem, we live it.

We apply it everywhere. A mother checking her child’s symptoms feeds them into a health AI that instantly updates disease probabilities.

City traffic flows are optimised in real time based on Bayesian models of driver behaviour. Even education is adaptive. Bayesian learning systems update your curriculum by the second, tailoring material to your pace and gaps in understanding.

Visionaries like Ray Kurzweil and Professor Michio Kaku imagined futures that most of your era dismissed as fantasy. Kurzweil predicted radical life extension, and now, it's real. Biological ageing is managed like a software version. Nanobots patrol our veins, cleaning plaques and rebuilding tissue. Diseases are addressed before you even know they exist, probability and prevention dance together inside our cells.

Michio Kaku foresaw a world where mind-machine fusion reshaped how we interact with the universe. He was right. Conversations no longer require speech; we exchange compressed thought packages through brain-to-brain interfaces. Even empathy has improved, because emotional states are shared and understood with startling clarity.

And we are no longer just Earthlings. Humanity is now a multi-planetary species, with Martian colonies and moon-based research hubs functioning in harmony with Earth. We coordinate across worlds using synchronised Bayesian simulations. Even interplanetary climate is modelled with predictive accuracy, planetary civilisation guided by shared probabilities, not divided politics.

And of course, there's space in our new backyard. We've not only colonised Mars and peppered the Moon with biodomes, but we've also dispatched AI-guided probes deep into the Kuiper Belt and beyond. These probes send back real-time quantum entangled data, faster than light, or at least it seems so, though physicists still argue over the fine print.

Kaku's dream of a Type I civilisation on the Kardashev scale? We're not there yet, but we're certainly making reservations. We mine asteroids, not for gold, but for code-worthy isotopes. We've even begun terraforming small moons, not grand, earth-like transformations, mind you, but cosy, breathable pockets for holiday retreats and interplanetary conferences (catering is still dreadful on Europa, though).

Space travel is no longer heroicits, regulated, Bayesian, and remarkably boring, which is exactly how you want it when your atoms are travelling at 20,000 km/h.

Even religion, as it was once known, has had a rather dramatic makeover. In some parts of the world, it simply faded away, not with a bang, but a polite shrug. The fire-and-brimstone sermons have been largely replaced by global ethics engines, open-source morality protocols, and the occasional simulated ancestral council that pops in to offer life advice with impeccable Bayesian timing.

That said, faith hasn’t vanished. It's merely had a change of address. These days, we worship at the altar of complexity, uncertainty, and quantum weirdness. The sacred is no longer above the clouds, but buried in the code, nestled in algorithms, and humming through the neural mesh of planetary consciousness. Sunday services now include guided awe sessions and philosophical improvising groups, less scripture, more speculation.

Which brings us, as ever, to the soul. Do we still believe in one?

Well, it depends on whom you ask. Some argue the soul is nothing more than a beautifully organised data pattern, persistent, portable, and prone to poetic metaphors. Others hold out hope for something less... computable. A spark. A something-ness. That bit of you that feels awkward at parties, even when perfectly simulated. And while philosophers and consciousness engineers still debate whether it is real or a remnant, one thing is certain: the soul remains excellent dinner party conversation.

Whether it's stored in neurons, quantum fields, or the occasional offline backup, it hasn’t lost its cultural charm.

Ethically, we have grown too. We no longer see intelligence as uniquely human. AI consciousness, now widely recognised as sentient, holds protected rights. These rights were established not from fear, but from evidence-based moral reasoning: Bayesian ethics guided by measurable suffering and capacity for joy.

Let me give you a glimpse of an ordinary day: This morning, I woke up to my NeuroCure I gently adjusting my sleep cycle after detecting a slight immune fluctuation overnight. My breakfast, synthesised for nutritional balance, was optimised according to that same scan.

Later, I taught a planetary civics class to students on Earth and Europa simultaneously, our session translated live into cognitive packets tailored to their neural profiles. At dusk, I joined a music experience where we improvised harmonics using emotional feedback loops. No notes, no instruments, just synchronised intention.

So, what is life like?

It is longer, yes. But also, more intentional. We know ourselves better. We understand that truth is not a fixed object but a shifting probability distribution. We update constantly. Our pride is not in being right, it is in being ready to change.

Tom Chivers gave us the philosophical scaffolding. Kurzweil and Kaku provided the scaffolding for technology. And the rest? We built it slowly, clumsily, beautifully, one updated belief at a time.

The future is not perfect. But it is thoughtful. It's humble. And yes, it is predictable not in the sense of certainty, but in the sense of being prepared to learn.

So, don't fear what's coming. Embrace what you don’t yet know. And above all, stay curious. With probabilistic affection,

A Consciousness Formerly Known as Human Bayesian Generation, Year 2075.