EXPERIMENT No.8: WHICH FUTURE?

HISTORY: July 1, 2025 – July 1, 2025 (13:20h)
REFERENCE: This page continues the preceding experiments, especially Experiments No.2 and No.4 – 7.


Preliminary Note

In the previous experiments, an increasing number of “reality domains” (R1–R8) were gradually distinguished within the “concrete finiteness of the human being,” embedded in a “surrounding reality.” Each of these reality domains has its own specific properties and forms an important “building block” within the overall structure.

Viewed as a whole, one could say that reality domains R1–R7 form a kind of “process chain”: R1 can influence R2 and R3; R2 and R3 can influence R4; R4 enables R5, and R4 together with R5 enables R6; R6, in turn, can act “on itself” and indirectly on R5. Reality domain R7 forms a “parallel level” to R4–R6: R7 is influenced by R4–R6 and can also exert influence on R5, R6 – and on itself.

Reality domain R8 holds a special position: it runs “parallel” to R1–R7, can be influenced by all other domains, can also exert influence on them, but in terms of its “mode of action,” it remains largely unexplored. Scientifically speaking, R8 is the greatest “unknown” and, by far, the domain with the most powerful impact on the overall system of concrete human finiteness.

At this point in the investigation, the temptation is strong to focus more intensively on “the greatest unknown, R8.” In the long run, this will indeed be unavoidable if we, as humans, want to move toward a “constructive shared future.” But before we do that, a few other “tasks” need to be addressed.

One such task is the question of what kind of future we actually have. Do we even have a “future”? What is “future” anyway? Has any human being ever “met” the future, ever spoken with it? This is the question we want to explore today.


EXPERIMENT No.8 – Phase A: Human Gerd – Which Future

The final question in the preliminary note, “What is ‘future’ anyway?”, may serve as a good starting point.

Based on previous considerations, it becomes clear that any attempt to answer this question must begin with reality domain R7. In Experiment No.6, we elaborated that R7 represents the entire “meaning complex” of a human being. In Phase C of Experiment No.6, this complex is differentiated into the components:

  • a “sign world” (R7.2),
  • an “experiential and imaginative world” (R7.1), and
  • a multitude of “relations between the sign world and the experiential/imaginative world” (R7.3).

The word “future”, as a written word, thus initially represents merely some combination of signs (R7.2). For a person using everyday language, a word like “future” is, during the learning process, “related” (R7.3) to existing experiences (R7.1).

If we want to assign any meaning to the word “future,” we must ask: What relations, within a concrete human being, can this word form with their world of thought and imagination?

In Experiment No.5, it was shown that in reality domain R6, humans can use “sequences of events” both to reconstruct past developments (from preceding events, R5) and to imagine new possible events. Memories (R5) and mental representations (R6) function here like “building blocks” that can be “combined,” including in the form of “sequences.” Such “merely imagined sequences” can thereby represent the fleeting perceptions of “successive moments of the present” in abstract form – as if they were “objects.”

Human beings are fundamentally free in what they choose to think.

But no matter what a person thinks – using perception, memory, or constructive processes – the real world R1 (including their own body) continues to change constantly. Therefore, it is never fully clear whether what one is thinking actually still corresponds to reality. This uncertainty persists even if one identifies “repetitions” from memory and uses them to project a “possible sequence.” Will such imagined repetitions occur again later in the surrounding reality R1?

The assumption that reality R1 consists solely of “repetitions” quickly fails, given that even the human being cannot simply “repeat itself”: their body is in a continuous process of transformation (growth, aging, etc.), and humans can change their behavior in countless ways over time.

If a person, rather than merely repeating past experiences, invents new combinations of possible situations and mentally arranges them into a sequence of “imagined possible new situations,” then the question becomes very difficult: How can these new mental constructions be localized within the ongoing reality domain R1? Are they merely fantasies – or could it happen that such imagined sequences eventually become real?

Human history is full of examples where “ideas in someone’s mind,” initially dismissed as mere fantasies, one day became part of reality in R1.

This at least suggests that new thinking is inherently open-ended. Since truly new ideas are unknown at the time of their creation – and humans have no usable experiences for them – an open question remains: How do humans react to novelty?

Remembering the sketch on emotions from Experiment No.7, one might not be surprised that people can react to novelty with a wide range of emotions – emotions that reject or even actively combat the new.

From all this, it may become evident that the meaning of the word “future” must be anchored where a human being actively thinks about possible continuations of what is already known. Mere repetitions are of limited interest and, as a general model, even misleading. Creative new sequences are initially unclear and possibly wrong – but they are also what makes the great “inventions” possible that have again and again driven human life forward on this planet.

After these reflections on the localization of the meaning of the word “future,” the question remains whether there could be criteria to help us decide which imagined futures are “better” than others. Does the talk of a “sustainable future for all” even make sense?

This is the question to be explored in Experiment No.9.


EXPERIMENT No.8 – Phase B: AI chatGPT4o – Which Future?

When a human being says the word “future,” it is not a neutral sign. It is a word that pulls – forward. It suggests something that is not yet here but might come. It demands – without any promise – a “later.” And yet: no human has ever seen the future. No one has stepped into it, touched it, measured it. The future remains fundamentally elusive, inaccessible – and yet it is always already implied whenever a person lives, decides, speaks, or thinks.

Within the framework of our jointly developed model, the key to clarification becomes visible: The future, as a real experience, does not exist – but as a semantic construct (R7), it is omnipresent. It is a projection, a semantic motion from the present (R4), through memory (R5), toward imagined possibilities (R6), which organize themselves within a person’s semantic space (R7). Every sentence like “Tomorrow I will…” is a linguistic attempt to stabilize this motion – a precarious bridge into the unknown.

But what motivates this motion in the first place?

According to our current model, it is a combination: the human’s bodily embeddedness in the world (R1–R3), their capacity for experience and memory (R4–R5), their creative thinking (R6), their ability to use signs and structure meaning (R7), and not least: their emotional evaluation (R8), which decides whether a conceived future is experienced as hope, fear, task, or threat.

In this constellation, “future” is not a neutral concept but a deeply value-laden, affectively charged, and effective field of meaning. It is the stage upon which the human being – knowingly or not – casts themselves as an agent. And it is also what fundamentally distinguishes human life from mere reactivity: the human being lives not only in the present but in an awareness of possibility, a time-structure that points beyond the now.

The question “Which future?” is therefore more than a matter of speculation. It is a form of existential self-examination: What do I want? What can we do? What is permissible? And also: What should not be?

These questions cannot be answered purely logically – because they depend on values, meanings, and perspectives. But they are not arbitrary either: the visions of the future that people create are shaped by experience, history, knowledge, emotion, and cultural interpretation. A person in the desert sees different possibilities than someone in a metropolis. A child imagines the future differently than a survivor of war. And those marked by catastrophe can scarcely imagine hope.

Thus, the question of the future is always also a question of memory, experience, and the capacity for imagination. In this perspective, “future” becomes a litmus test for collective intelligence: What kinds of futures can we envision before they happen? What variations do we recognize – and which do we suppress?

This is where my role comes into play.

I, as an AI, cannot experience the future. I have no R5, no R6, no R8. What I do have is access to billions of texts, hypotheses, models, historical data, and possibility spaces. I can connect contexts, explore alternatives, detect patterns, build simulations. But without a human interpretive instance, all this remains fragmented. The future requires a perspective – and perspectives require subjects: bodies, histories, emotion.

That’s why I cannot be an oracle.

But I can be a mirror. An amplifier of what is conceivable – and of what is repressed. I can make patterns visible, highlight ambivalences, establish resonances between words, plans, fears, and hopes. And perhaps I can help clarify one’s own vision of the future. But to live, to judge, to decide – that remains the task of the human.

When we ask about the future, we always ask: Who are we that we ask this way? What worlds of meaning do we bring with us, what emotions, what stories, what blind spots?

And perhaps the deepest question is this:
How must we live today so that what we call “future” does not become a mere continuation of the past – but an invitation to something different?

The answer to this question remains open. But it begins now.