Plausibilisation
Plausibilisation is the practice of laying open the reasons and preconditions behind ideas of the future. Unlike probability, plausibility is subjective and depends on a group’s assumptions. Plausibilising means asking under which conditions an image of the future makes sense, and to whom. This makes images of the future open to debate, even between groups with different assumptions.
Nele Fischer and Sascha Dannenberg described plausibility as a lens of futures studies in 2021. It was with them, in the master’s at FU Berlin, that Jonas Drechsel learned to think of plausibility as a practice, and his essay in the Journal of Futures Studies (2026) builds on this.
How this works in a workshop showed in the work with the Illustratoren Organisation. The assumptions about AI and illustration lay openly on the table, and afterwards the organisation sharpened its position on AI.
Guiding questions
- Under which assumptions would this be plausible?
- To whom is it plausible, and to whom absurd?