Not everyone has $1,000 to bet, and might be in search of backers. Not everyone is sure if a contemplated Long Bet is phrased well or would attract interest. Some may want to try out bet-worthy thoughts in public before committing to a bet. This discussion is for bet prototyping.

By the year 2075, we will be mining at least five other planets in or out of our solar system for resources.

My argument:

By 2075, natural resources will be very rare. Hopefully we will be using an alternative source of power, but we would still need other types of material to manufacture various things. There might even be specialty items that could only be constructed with offworld materials. The medical use could be astounding, too. With the wealth of materials that we could find, it would revolutionize industry, and pathe the way to further space exploration. Greed always leads to a new discoveries, and with the realization that money could be made, and lots of it, from harvesting resources from other worlds, would lead to a huge boon of space exploration by corperations. This sounds a bit cyberpunkish, but I don't know if we'll be totally self-sufficient enough to not need to harvest material.
:end:


This is a bet I've been wanting to place since I found this site. But, I don't have $1,000 (Only sixteen.. trying hard enough to get a car!) So here it is. Feel free to give any comments and/or suggestions.

Thanks,
Eric

Thanks,
Eric

Natural resources today are less rare than they were 100 years ago and will be again less rare 100 years from now. In 1950 for example, there were known reserves of iron ore totalling 19,000 metric tons. One might assume, albeit incorrectly, that with industrial growth continuing at an incredible pace iron should now be scarce and costly once that supply was exhausted. In fact, the opposite is true and as of 1980 the known supply of iron ore was almost 94,000 metric tons, a 500% increase over the supply 30 years prior, in spite of tremendous growth. The inflation adjusted price of almost half of all minerals has fallen since 1876 and those that have increased have only done so at about 1% per year. While asteroids are tremendous sources of ore, mining them won't become necessary any time soon, if ever. As we see empirically from the past century, in most cases increased demand brings increased supply. There's no indication we're running out of anything except maybe optimism. The only resource that appears to be inexhaustable these days is environmental dogma.

This article makes a similar point about oil:
"No resource has inspired so great a fear of running out as oil has. This fear is not new. And every time in the last hundred years that an expert predicted we would run out, that prediction has been wrong—and not just wrong, but wrong by a huge margin. In 1891, for example, the U.S. Geological Survey stated that there was little chance that oil would be found in Kansas or Texas. Since then, 14 billion barrels of oil have been produced from just those two states. In 1914 an official of the U.S. Bureau of Mines claimed that the total future U.S. production would be 5.7 billion barrels. In fact, production has already been six times that figure. In 1920 the director of the Geological Survey said that peak annual crude production had almost been reached. By 1948 annual U.S. production was four times its 1920 level. Finally, in one of the most astoundingly wrong predictions, the Interior Department stated in 1939 that U.S. oil supplies would run out in thirteen years. Of course, over sixty years later, the United States is still producing oil.
—Source: Baumol, Blackman, and Wolff, p. 214. "

"According to Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, oil and natural gas reserves rose 733% between 1950 and 1990, and the inflation adjusted average price of natural resources has decreased to now about one-eighth of what it was in 1900. "

"No one knows how much oil is in the Earth. Government officials and private analysts have predicted at various times that oil would be depleted in 1914, '19, '26, '39, '49 and '80. President Carter falsely predicted in '77, that "we could use up all proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade."

By 2012 "extreme" sports like skateboarding & snowboarding will be included in mainstream sports reports.

Two alternatives:

1. Recycle existing materials.

2. Mine the ocean floor near to hydrothermal vents.

Maybe you should extend the bet to include moons and asteroids, as we simply can't land on several planets in our system (they are gas giants) and Mercury and Venus are somewhat hostile to machinery.

bet suggestion : "By 2200, US dollar will no more be used."
if someone want to make this bet, i also suggest to make the bet in a more tangible unit as gold or silver pound.

argument: either the US split into more countries or there is a union between US and other countries or the money name change after a huge bankrupt and a devaluation or the world market need a unique money that make USD unused.

general suggestion for long bet: allow bet in other unit than USD.

How about an alternative: By 2200 the US Dollar will be the only currency left?

Well, I was thinking more along the lines (With the gas giants) of space stations being built around them with constant probes being sent in and collecting the material needed (Gasses that could be refined into more usable material) Asteroids and moons are a good idea, also, being that they seem to (from what I've read) contain high levels of valuable alkaloids.

This is an idea for a bet that I am actually surprised hasn't come up yet on this site. I don't have money to wager, nor the correct amount of information that would be neccesary to make a prediction, so I am hoping someone might use my idea.
If I could, I would bet that time travel by use of any sort of machine or electronic device (this excludes the human mind.. its capabilities haven't been fully recognized yet) will not be possible, ever.
I believe Einstein did come up with a theory of his own that time travel would be possible if people could travel at a speed faster than the speed of light. I also believe that if his theory were true, we would have seen some form of evidence by now supporting this theory. I haven't met anyone from the future yet. Have you?


.. something to think about.

By 2020, the defacto philosophy of consumerism will largely be abandoned due to the realization of its ecologically, sociologically and spiritually self-defeating nature.

My bet proposal is: - By the year 2025, a computer will employ affective language to make determinations of an ethical nature (with "ethical" defined as favoring the virtuous mode - to the exclusion of the vices) as judged within the context of a suitably-modified Turing's Test

Supporting Argument: The first true ethical simulation of artificial intelligence is awaiting in the wings, an achievement formally based upon a ten-level metaperspectival hierarchy of the traditional listings of virtues, values, and ideals. These specific ethical groupings are collectively viewed as subsets within a hierarchy of metaperspectives, each more abstract listing building directly upon that which it supersedes. The extremely systematic and orderly nature of this ethical hierarchy allows for extreme efficiency in programming, eliminating much of the associated redundancy. This AI system is organized as a tandem-nested expert system: composed of a primary affective-language analyzer, overseen by a master control unit that coordinates the motivational interchanges over real time. Through an elaborate matching procedure, the precise motivational level of communication is accurately determined, defined as the passive-monitoring mode. This basic determination, in turn, serves as the basis for a response repertoire tailored to the computer, simulating an outwardly-apparent sense of motivation within the verbal interaction (the true AI simulation mode). The true test of this bet is perhaps not "if" but "when;" namely, will the right combination of venture capitalists and programmers be assembled to make this (patent-pending) project a reality by 2025. With a proper degree of funding, I would gladly enter into an opposing bet with any doubters remaining out there - more details at www.charactervalues.com

I am considering placing a bet along these lines:
by 2012, computer analysis of human and proto-human genetic (genomic?) information will be able to prove by statistical methods that the changes in our genetic makup when compared to our recent (proto-human) ancestors cannot be accounted for by simple random mutations, and there must have been some outside manipulation of our genes to produce our present human race.

I do not have any strong supporting arguments for this at this time, but I do believe this will be proven true. I am not specifically claiming that the outside intervention was extra-terrestrial, although that is obviously the most likely case. Alternative sources for such intervention like time travellers from our own future are highly questionable.

Thoughts?

I'm trying a possible bet worthy idea. I would like to bet 2 years worth of professional service to the non-profit organization of the better's choice ($50K-60K value) for the same amount in monetary donation to the Salvation Army if the better loses. What are people's thoughts? Thanks!

Bets using in-kind stakes such as your propose would be fine to have going on, and you're welcome to use this site as a forum to draw responders, who you might then transact with privately by email. However to be a formal Long Bet, cash money is required. Managing Long Bets over time is squirrelly enough with vagueness in the terms; vagueness in the stakes pushes it over into unmanagable for the foundation. But private individuals could well bear down enough to make it work.

Of course, if you find a way for someone to monetize your services in advance---50K is a handsome bet---then you may have a workable approach.

"By 2020, the defacto philosophy of consumerism will largely be abandoned due to the realization of its ecologically, sociologically and spiritually self-defeating nature."

The challenge with a bet like this is to find some extremely clear indicator(s) to state in the terms of the Bet which makes judgement about the outcome easy and obvious. "Will largely be abandoned" is too vague and arguable.

One measure might be the percentage of the GNP in the US devoted to advertising in 2020. As I recall, that number has been a constant for many decades (I forget what the number is). You could research the number and declare it will fall to half in 2020, as an indicator of the precipitous collapse of consumerism.

First, I would agree with Stewart Brandon that this needs to be expressed in more explicit and measurable terms.

That said, I think this is one of the most important issues facing mankind today. I would really like to see this as an actual bet, if only so that it can be a starting point for discussion on this extremely important issue. Only through a critical analysis of what is commonly called a "consumer economy" can we hopefully find a way out of the mess we are currently in. And we certainly need to find a way out, because the consequences of continuing along the lines we (in the Western world) are currently pursueing, and trying so hard to force upon the rest of the planet, will most likely lead to an ecomomic and ecological collapse that will set back civilization for generations.

I find it incredible that the idea of a 'consumer economy' is lauded by supposedly educated economists as the height of human achievement in this arena. This is such a short sighted view of things, and is exactly the kind of thinking that I believe this site was established to better examine.

I humbly suggest some points that might serve as starting points on this issue:

The Earth, our planet, and all it encompasses, is clearly a finite resource. Regardless of what it's 'carrying capacity' is eventually determined to be, there is only so much of everything to go around.

The 'consumer economy' is based on an ever expanding 'market'. What happens when the entire planet's population is thoroughly saturated with all the 'stuff' it could ever want or use?

There are also social issues involved, which again, the champions of this style of 'globalism' choose to ignore. Such an economic model requires some of the population to be the 'cheap labour' for the rest of the population to enjoy all these consumer 'toys'. This cannot be sustained indefinately.

These are just some ideas that come imediately to mind.

I would (if I had the money) bet that in the next 50 years, Some person(s) in a non-astronomical research area will discover some form of variation in the spectral frequency of radiation over long distances or of long periods of time. Additionaly this dicovery will invalidate all the data and theories derived from the "Red Shift Theroy".

Here is a proposal for a bet...By the year 2020 an outbreak of either Ebola or Marburg virus will occur outside the African continent causing 10,000 deaths.

howdy folks i just joined, there seem to be many people nowadays jumping on the mars bandwagon. it occurs to me that it is much more realistic to be be focusing on projects a bit closer to home ie the moon or (luna). how does anyone feel about space salvage? if not very many people feel (as it seems) it`s worth returning there (been there, no scientific value, etc) the equipment left there should be salvaged. i`ve run into arguments against this; save it for a museum, etc. from the exact same people who advocate mars. if we`re going to establish ourselves in space, the most logical way is using available resources ie mining. which is more important: museum or salvage?

By the year 2025 50% of the duties currently done by domestic electricians will be done using WEBCAMS and high speed internet connections. By that time the speed of the internet will be fast enough for even someone in India or Japan to monitor and maintain a small U.S. manufacturing facility remotely. The evidence for this can already be seen as India is already transmitting software via modem to U.S. buyers. Also, the job of electricians has changed dramatically in the past 20 years. Electricians spend more and more time now PUSHING BUTTONS to make software LOGIC connections now and less time skinning copper wire to make hardware connections.

Dan Laskowski

Current theories indicate that theoretical time travel is possible. I’m sorry to say I don’t have my references available to me now. But is has been said that the only problem with this type of travel is that will only work in one direction – forward. The time traveler would be essentially stranded in the future without the ability to return. The fabric of Time/Space does not allow it. I will try to post some brief synopsis of these theories or direct you to links on the web from reputable sources – In the future…

"by 2100 at least one member of the AOSIS group (Alliance of Small Island States) will have disappeared due to rising sea levels."

pretty safe bet

Move up the date from 2100 and you might get a taker.

(Since odds are always even, bet initiators tend to negotiate for a taker by adjusting the time frame.)

By 2030, a government or private organization will have built a space elevator capable of lifting 100 tons of cargo into low-earth or geosynchronous orbit.

We may have to define what a space elevator is, but NASA has put at least one feasability study together that shows it could be done within 15 years of getting the funding (once carbon nanotube technology, among other things, is ready). The question is, will the world's apathy towards space exploration let any government provide the funding, and will any private company do it knowing the government won't?

Carey

Based on the latest news releases from China and their plans to park a Lunar Base(base in this context involving permanent settlement of any number of people) before 2010 I would bet that they will succeed and that the US will be right behind them unwilling to give up that strategic position without a similar base of their own and soon after (pre2025) the US will have the first Mars base.

The pace of economic and political change appears to have increased coming into the last century or two. Some people think America is 'for ever', its continued presence as inevitable as the sun rising in the morning. I disagree.

To clarify, by 2060 I think there is a good chance that
a) There will be no sovereign* country by the name of "The United States of America" (e.g. different name or lacking its present political independence).
b) Another country will be the leading economic power** (Possibly a recently formed federation or union*** as opposed to one of the countries as currently exist).

* adj. Self-governing; independent: a sovereign state
** Defined in absolute terms, not per capita
*** If this was to be (for example) the EU, then the EU would have to be at least as much a governing body as the Federal Government of the US is now.

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/chirbase.htm
Partial Quote "By July 2001 a Chinese aerospace magazine indicated that Chinese scientists had drafted a much more modest four-phase long term plan.
Phase 1, by 2005: Lunar flyby or orbiting satellite missions, perhaps using the DFH-3 bus.
Phase 2, by 2010: unmanned soft-landing missions. Phase 3, by 2020: Robotic exploration using surface rovers. Phase 4, by 2030: Lunar sample return missions.
Only after 2030 would manned flights and construction of a lunar base begin"

Before the first closed bet is resolved one of the open bets* will be determined to be 'dead'** to the satisfaction of the proposer of that bet, the long bets administrators and whoever opposes _this_ bet.

* It is assumed that reasonable care is taken to not accept open bets that are 'dead' at the time they are proposed, e.g. it only counts if the open bet had a period of uncertainty in the face of reasonable investigation before it was resolved.

** Factually 'yes' or 'no'.

we may need to mars upcoming mars vehicles, so 1 way would be a lunar flyby. there are many things we still can do on the moon. not much has really been done there to date as far as settlements.

I think a fair bet would be that by 2020 there will be a new record number of deaths in one day due to an act of war. With developments in technology and growing tension in world politics, it is safe to say that there will be an incident that carries more deaths than the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, which I do believe is the largest loss of life due to an act of war in a single day. I believe that the date of 2020 might even have to be moved up to get a someone to bet against it.

I've often wondered if and when the majority of the world's population will disassociate itself from organized religion as we now know it. I don't have the stats in front of me, but I believe that on a global level, this has been a slow and sliding trend since the beginning of the 20th century. I've spoken about this with a few pals and some have said that because of the coming intimidating advances in science and technology, this migration away from religion may reverse itself, and more people will seek solace in things that are more extremely fundamentalist, unchanging, and rooted in history. However, hasn't progress in general always gotten this doomsday rap in one form or another? I don't want to place a value judgement on either of these possibilities as much as I'd just like to be an interlocutor and see what everyone else thinks. Here's my current bet - Less than 75% of the world's population will belong to an organized religion (that exists in 2002) in the year 2100.

I think the trend is as much towards (disorganised) superstition as it is away from (organised) religion.

I'll see your 'church attendence' and raise you 'feng shui'. ;-)

"Less than 75% of the world's population will belong to an organized religion (that exists in 2002) in the year 2100. "...

Nicely stated. It does beg the question of what happens if a NEW organized religion becomes predominant in the century. I hope you find a way to grow this into an official bet---among other reasons, to see how you and an opponent might spell out what constitutes an "organized" religion.

S. Brand wrote: It does beg the question of what happens if a NEW organized religion becomes predominant in the century.


-- Very insightful observation -- leaving the door open for the unexpected. As it happens, a new behaviorally-based system for the moral classification of the virtues and values has recently been published, which exhibits the potential for becoming the "next big thing" on the world religious scene: namely, the new science of Powerplay Politics (as further described at): www.charactervalues.com

As a long-term thinker, I would be interested on any opinions you may have concerning this proposed potentiality, as I suspect a more widespread exposure of this topic could go a long way towards mediating many of the current religious conflicts on the world scene today.
JLM

There are many people trying to find the commonalities between religion to see if there are unifying concepts that underly all of the religions (or most of them). The concept of faith and the supposed power of faith is something that needs further examination, and is being studied more and more these days.

Psychology answers the questions of faith in what it deems to be a scientific manner, yet the power that faith seems to have when all parties believe in it demands further investigation.

Is religion simply a means to an end, or are there underlying truths to it? I do not claim to know. It's very possible that our entire understanding of the universe will change as we better understand subatomic particles, space, and time better.

I know this post was kind of all over the place, but I am quite interested in the unification of religion/faith/philosophy with science.

If we define religion as "faith in something that cannot be proved" well, then, atheism is also a relgion, is at least somewhat organized, and is in fact being taught as the prevailing belief system in schools. I'd say the atheists cannot prove there is no god (or gods, and who defines what constitutes godhood, anyway? Do we use Arthur Clarke's definition that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic? By that definition I would be a god to some -- I can write windows drivers for instance.) any more than I could prove there is one. Therefore, they constitute a religion. They are in fact quite organized as any scientist trying to get grant money will tell you. You keep to "atheist" standards in your grant request or it will not fly. Even trying to find out if the original chemicals of life were templated on clay (as the bible seems to indicate) will not get grant money even though it seems entirely reasonable as a thesis, clay being the perfect imperfect crystal with low bonding energy for most of this stuff. And for many years, there was this assumption in cosomology that the universe must be "closed" and therefore there must be a lot of "missing matter" was based on the belief system that there must not be anything "special" about this particular incarnation of the big bang. Although data that disproves this has been around for quite awhile, it was only recently accepted generally that the universe is in fact "open", even though that actually says nothing for or against atheism -- but it shakes the foundations a little. Of course, there's always the anthropic principle to fall back on. "Everyone knows it takes carbon to make scientists, so therefore if the rules were different, we'd not be here to observe it", but that's pretty weak as an argument for anything. I'd say all sides are in obvious error on many of these sorts of questions. Evolution, decried by many religious fundamentalists, is obviously a fact. In some fast moving bacteria type systems, it can be observed in much less than a human lifetime. However, this disproves nothing about any religion I know of, and the bible creation "myth" almost gets it right in telling us what order things happened in. Why the fight? Let's all look for the truth instead! Now, although I have a personal faith, I have fled all organized religion as it seems to be simply a social phenomenon and usually corrupts those who rise to social power through it. I know many others like me. So, I'd bet the trend, at least for intelligent people, will be against organized religion in the forseeable future.

Myself, a musician friend, and a minister got the wild idea that we should start our own organized religion, for fun. We decided the god would be UlaTek, be more or less rational (no one's tried that one), science/technology based, and would appear as an apparition to true believers, floating down as a microprocessor controlled statue that would issue pronouncements and so forth. It turned out to be too easy. When we encountered objections we could simply say things like "UlaTek is big" or "UlaTek is beyond YOUR comprehension" and other stuff like that. The minister helped us with fleshing out a system of beliefs in UlaTek, the normal creation myths, history and so forth. Well, to make a long story short, we had to quit. None of us had the moral stomach to foist this on the world -- and this is important -- we were starting to gather a serious following!
People wanted to go out and spread the good news about UlaTek! Some of them were apparently good thinkers otherwise. Just goes to show that there is a large herding instinct in the human race, I suppose. So in light of this, it is hard to say whether there will be a following for organized religion in the future. As long as organized relgion fufills certain social needs, and doesn't demand that "god be wound up" on days other than sunday (Jethro Tull), I'd guess there will still be takers.

Its worth pointing out that already biochemists have shown that no current theory of genetics/evolution can account for the presence of enzymes vital for life. These molecules are so specific that in some cases it is impossible to consider intermediate steps from a more simple enzyme through to the ones our bodies use today. The reason for this being that in many cases if one tiny tiny part of the molecule is not completely perfect, the enzyme will not function properly...and in the case of enzymes, not functioning properly means that the reactions they are involved in proceed at, for example, 0.0000001% of the required rate. It is possible to theorise quite reasonably about the evolution of things like eyes, from starting at simple sensitivity to light as seen in microscopic organisms, and working upwards. This is because sensitivity to light works at all levels. With enzymes, this is not the case.

The question as to how these enzymes came about remains, to the best of my knowledge, unanswered. How our bodies are able to produce these enzymes is a mystery from the point of evolution...we can show how we produce them, but not how our DNA evolved to be able to produce them. It is theoretically possible that we used to use less efficient enzymes that worked well enough to keep us alive until random mutations developed a more efficient version, but given the highly specific nature of the molecules involved and the lack of evidence to support this it seems highly unlikely.

Im a firm believer that there is an answer out there that doesnt involve genetic engineering, but I dont have the foggiest what it might be. I also dont have enough money...

Its a very western centred view, this one about the decline of organised religion. I suppose Africa is the most obvious example of the rapid growth of what I guess you could call `disorganised religion` and I see no reason to see that trend reversing to the extent that 75% of the worlds population would no longer be a member of an organised religion.
Take a look at Falung Gong (sorry about the spelling) which is larger than most protestant branches of Christianity in the West (dont have stats with me, feel free to prove me wrong), it just shows us how little we really know about situations outside our own doorstep.

If you could define `organised religion` satisfactorily, I would try my hardest to find the money to take you up on your bet. I'd suggest something along the lines of the comments written about faith in something that cannot be proved etc, but it also needs to include some sort of metaphysical element/spirituality element?

But have a look at what the psychologists and sociologists have to say, and I think that the need in humans for something other than what they can see will never be satisfied, and couple that with our need to belong to something seen as bigger than ourselves, and I think organised religion -whether a current religion or a new one- will be as strong as ever, if anything stronger, as technology takes us in ever more scary directions, and people try to rebel against the perceived constraints of science on our thought processes and our emotional or spiritual life.

No bona fide videotape showing Osama bin Laden is or was alive and well at any time after September 11, 2002 will be published prior to September 11, 2004.

My opinion is that this is of societal importance, but I wonder whether Long Bets is the appropriate place to bet.

The Bet: In 2100 (maybe before) we will be able to produce energy in a way in can replace oil.

The political confrontations with countries that don´t need to produce anything else than oil, the poverty and economical recession of the world, the internet and the knowledge so easily interchanged, the speed of Japan in developing new risky technology, and the strength of Europe, will give the world a new way.... with an easy, cheap and dangerous way of making energy. Which? How? That's not not my expertise. I base my bet, convinced that the human nature only needs the conditions to discover and create. He will find the way. The events make a path.....

The Bet: By the year 2020 the EU and the US will have engaged with each other in a military action.

The Rationale: The EU are currently putting the finishing touches to their rapid reaction force. By the year 2020 the population of the EU could be as much as double that of the US, and the EU economy could be between 1.5 and 2.5 times the size of the US economy. Competition for global resources will be severe. There has already been an escalation of trade wars (steel especially) over the last number of years.

The US are currently in conflict with the international courts over the issue of immunity for their military. Current EU attitudes to the role of the military is sigificantly less hawkish than in the US.

US and EU global military objectives are dissimilar, with the US taking more of a 'Global Policeman' approach. This approach is an anathema to many in the EU.

et cetera...

"No bona fide videotape showing Osama bin Laden ..."

Presumably you would also be betting against his being captured alive, or indeed found 'just recently' dead. I presume his fingerprints or such _are_ on file somewhere?

That's a very fuzzy bet.

a) There's no particular need for the energy to be 'new'.
b) There's no particular need for the energy to be 'dangerous'
c) There's no particular need for the energy to be 'cheap' (just cheapER).
d) It's not clear that there will still be _readily available_ sources of oil by 2100, and if not there's no way that oil _would_ be being used.

So, I suggest one of the following.
1. By 2100 one of the (or _the_) major sources of energy will be something _not_ in common use in 2002.
or
2. By 2100 oil will not be a major source of energy.

Semi-plausible, but I think 2020 is too soon.

I also have doubts that the US will have a suitable 'trigger' by that time. Trade disagreements probably are not going to be sufficient.

Stewart Brand was asking about possible short (<5year) Long Bets on the News forum. How about this one:

"At least one of the Eastern European countries invited to join the EU in the next round of enlargement will reject membership in a referendum."

Obviously the timescale is not fixed, but the target date to admit new members is 2004 last time I checked. Even with some slippage this should still be a short bet, and the issue is certainly important.

Unfortunately I am not certain enough about the answer to volunteer $1000 on either side - I think it is a 50-50 proposition.

My guess is that if he were captured alive, someone would videotape him, even if only on his way to prison (or throne room, who knows what tomorrow may bring). The condition could be changed from 'no bonafide video' to 'no credible evidence of his being alive after ..,' but it lacks specificity. Is testimony from one of his cronies credible evidence? If I substitute 'conclusive' for 'credible,' does this raise the bar too high?

Is the essence of the bet that one of these continental powers will use violence against the other in order to settle a dispute which has defied peaceful resolution, or would it count if a zealot or group of zealots from one side harmed a civilian or military asset of the other side?

It would clarify things for me if you told me whether you would consider anything in the public record that occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis to meet your criteria for "military action." I am thinking of the naval blockade.

The general subject of your bet would certainly be appropriate for Long Bets---I'm surprised there haven't been any such posted yet.
The present phrasing of your prototype Bet is unclear to me, though.

There's an excellent recent book on this subject---THE NEW CHRISTENDOM---which makes the case that Pentacostal (charismatic) Christianity is on the rise in a major way in Africa, Asia, Latin America. Much will be determined by that if it continues.

The Space Elevator was a nice idea prior to September 11
It would be a very brave govt or corporation who is willing to risk the 100+ billion dollar cost with such an obvious target.

The technology for live, two-way video communication has been available for a long time (30 years?). Toaster-cheap video cameras and displays are almost upon us. Deploying enough high bandwidth, low latency network capability throughout the backbone and down to the last mile, is still a problem. But the biggest hurdle of all may be social - do we want to see who we are talking to, and, moreover, do we want them to see us? And then there is the marketing catch-22: few will buy and use a video phone unless enough other people already have one.

The proposed date seems ridiculously late, but some might claim it will never happen. It probably won't happen before wide-spread video-on-demand, because the technologies are very similar; a video phone link between two people is essentially a two-way video-on-demand, but it also requires very low latency to be effective.

Maybe video phones will have to sneak into our lives through the backdoors rather than with a big commercial splash. Maybe we won't want to publically acknowledge the early popular uses until everyone already knows about it. Hindsight is 20/20 after all.

On the other hand, maybe once it starts to catch on, it will spread like a wildfire. It seems inevitable to me that video phones will eventually be as common as audio-only phones are now. After all, we do go to enormous expense to meet in person just to get that all important face time.

The Savannah theory, the current leading scientific model of human evolution does not explain the many crucial differences between humans and other savannah mammals such as bipedalism (e.g. two legged pregnant females move MUCH slower than four legged pregnant females), hairlessness (e.g. massive sweating and water loss compared to the much more efficent cooling system body hair provides), subcutaneous fat at birth (harder for mothers to carry their young and young can't grip fur, mother's hands are not free to fight or climb), large breasts, buttocks and penises (much harder to move quickly with them, no sports bras or jock straps available at the time), and many other crucial differences detailed by Elaine Morgan in her various books.
All these differences can be explained and would seem adaptive if one assumes an aquatic period in early human evolution (close in time to the homo-chimpanzee split 6-8 million years ago.
The bet I would like to place specifies that fossils supporting an aquatic stage in our evolution will be found in the next 5o years, thus putting the last nail in the savannah theory's coffin and significantly altering our understanding of our evolution as a species.

In view of recent developments.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992599
This might be an appropriate time to make this bet, (although it might well be disallowed as being too short a time frame).

The first confirmed attempt at human reproductive cloning will result in a miscarriage or stillbirth.

"The Savannah theory, the current leading scientific model of human evolution does not explain the many crucial differences between humans and other savannah mammals such as bipedalism (e.g. two legged pregnant females move MUCH slower than four legged pregnant females)"

An evolutionary adaptation does not need to benefit a species in all ways at all times. Our bipedal nature allows us to traverse long distances much more efficiently than chimpanzees, and also frees our upper limbs to carry tools- a key factor in hominid development.

"hairlessness (e.g. massive sweating and water loss compared to the much more efficent cooling system body hair provides)"

Humans have retained body hair over the areas most important to protect from the direct rays of the sun, as well as in our armpits to retain persperation more effectively. The humans that have remained in the parts of Africa where our ancestors first left the jungle have found this configuration to serve them quite well for many tens of millenia.

"subcutaneous fat at birth (harder for mothers to carry their young and young can't grip fur, mother's hands are not free to fight or climb)"

Like the other great apes, humans usually bear only one young at a time due to the large undertaking of raising them to adulthood. Humans do not frequently have a need to climb, with or without young. (The same can be said for adult gorillas.) Humans, as social animals, generally overcome the problems of pregancy and protecting young through their communal existence. Many other animals, such as some whales, solve these problems in similar ways.

"large breasts, buttocks and penises (much harder to move quickly with them, no sports bras or jock straps available at the time)"

The same could be said for the peacock's tail or the stag's antlers. Some adaptations exist because they help an animal attract a mate (thus passing on its DNA) rather than insure a long life for the individual animal. Large breasts and penises may well fall into this category.

I'm not sure how all these adaptations fit into your theory of aquatic pre-human hominids (do large penises help us swim faster somehow?) However as someone who has been swimming with seals, dolphins and various others I can assure you that our species is certainly not one of the best mammalian swimmers in the animal kingdom.

"However as someone who has been swimming with seals, dolphins and various others I can assure you that our species is certainly not one of the best mammalian swimmers in the animal kingdom."

Which brings to mind a couple of points.

1. How 'aquatic' is 'aquatic' ?
If I pop down to the local pool once a week that doesn't make me an aquatic mammal, but where is the dividing line?

2. How is 'aquaticness' ;-) going to be determined from fossil record? A humaniod with a practically identical skeleton could semi-demi-plausibly make a living on a shellfish diet but ... How are you going to tell that fossil X was living most of the time in the water?

And finding a single skeleton in a marine environment doesn't cut it on it's own.

By 2050 it will be possible to take a "snap shot" of one human brain and "imprint" it upon another human brain, transfering all the memory, knowledge and intelligence of the first onto the second, thus exstending the life of the first.

Given that the brain appears to operate as a sequence of electric signals, once should be able to read said signals into a digital device. The reverse should also be true, that a set of signals could be mapped onto an existing brain and create a replica of the original at the time the snap shot was taken.

Comments, queries, etc? My bet would be in the $5,000 to $10,000 range...

I daresay you would get takers for your brain imprint bet.

Remember that when you get a taker for your bet, you have to put up the money AT THAT TIME in order for it to go On the Record. Do you have the 5 or $10K ready to commit now?

$$ is not a problem, I just wanted to get some feedback on the concept before I put up the dough. Also want to make sure the "bet" is tight - seems like a lot of discussion about bets with sloppy parameters.

So, for all those reading - beat it up now so we can avoid the details later!

thx,

Scott

"[...] take a "snap shot" of one human brain and "imprint" it upon another human brain, transfering all the memory, knowledge and intelligence of the first onto the second, thus extending the life of the first."

And snuffing out the life of the second. I can see more than a few cultural and ethical problems in that approach.

As to the possibility of the bet, 2050 seems a little early for 'reading' a brain in full. As for 'writing' a major problem I foresee problems in that each individual brain is different in the fine detail of layout (even if the broad outlines are (usually) the same).

2050 was drawn out of a hat as far as timing (always important to start somewhere).

The key thing is the "write" medium after the read. As we all know, having an untested backup is somewhat useless - perhaps more dangerous than not having one at all. The only way to test the read side will be to write it to an available medium and have it “work”.

I believe the solution to the "snuffing the life out" problem you cite is cloning. As we will see in the next 10 to 20 years, organs will be routinely (perhaps another bet!) grown in organ farms. The brain will be no different - the problem of course is that, like getting a new hard drive for your computer, it might work but you'll have lost all your software & contents. This would also address the issue of brain layout - presumably the layout from the original to the copy would be very close (much more so than two unrelated individuals).

"The key thing is the "write" medium after the read. As we all know, having an untested backup is somewhat useless"

I don't believe you used the word 'backup' before. It is quite possible that the 'read' process will be destructive. E.g. "you read, you dead" ;-P

As to the similarity of cloned brains ...
1. (AFAIK) Identical twins do not have identical fingerprints, or retinal patterns.
2. On the level of connections between individual neurons in the brain these physically change over the years as old brain cells die, and new connections are made.

Basically, I think it plausible that the information may be able to be read, before it can be interpretted. Just as you can look at the raw binary information of a .exe file and have no idea what it will do when run, a 'brain dump' would be un-intelligable. Now this isn't necessarily a show stopper - you don't have to understand the contents of a file to copy it from one computer to another.

However, it may be that you need to do the equivalent of 'uncompiling' the dump from Brain A before it can be 're-compiled' for the specifics of Brain B.

To grossly simplify, if I'm "Intel Inside" and my clone is "PowerRisc" I may be up that famous creek without a paddle.

Ideally what we'll be doing here is helping Scott Case phrase a Long Bet that is pretty outrageous sounding, so he'll get a taker, yet is consistent with what he believes will really happen. (The earlier the finish date, for example, the easier to get a taker.)

Also we're helping make the phrasing of the bet crisp and enticing, so there's little argument at the end of the bet who won.

The best help is to help the bettor make a stronger, clearer case, not to talk him out of the bet. That comes with the counter argument once there's a bet worth taking.

OK, OK I'll back off.
Although the inherent strength of the 'longbets' system is that an argument can be made more / less plausible just by moving the end date.
I'd say this one would fit around 2100 a lot better than 2050.

Please don't back off! I'm most interested in bets that can be resolved within my lifetime, selfish as that may be - so I'm interested in ideas that make the bet a long shot (no pun intended) while still feeling achievable.

With your comments in mind, perhaps a "human brain" is too complex to copy and map onto another human brain. In much the same way as sheep were the first cloned animals, perhaps taking a trained rat, clone it, copy the brain and map it to the clone. If the clone could accomplish, without training, the same tasks as the original we'd conclude that the read/write process worked.

Obviously I'd word the bet to include any mammal but that the experiment be replicated by at least 3 different scientists…

Still a stretch but perhaps more feasible in the time frame?

Well, let's just say that for the full personality / memory 'human brain to brain' transfer my personal feeling is ...
2030 - No way in hell.
2050 - Yeah, right
2100 - *Hmm*, Maybe ...

On the level of mammalian animal experiment I would be quite impressed with the ability to transfer direct to the brain of animal B some skill / habit that was present in animal A. This should be readily demonstratable and (as it potentially involves only a small part of the brain) would seem at first glance to be a lot easier. It would also be of interest (for better or worse) for human beings. Imagine being able to take your driving lessons as a 1 minute 'zap' instead of several hours practice on real (and dangerous) roads.

I would say 'transfer direct to brain of some skill / habit / training' is conceivable for ~2030 to ~2050. Said transfer could involve some or all of electric / chemical / mechanical manipulation but I would exclude VR or similar methods of training from the bet. (e.g. no training rats via VR goggles and claiming success).

Eternal Life, revisited…

By 2050 it will be possible to take a "snap shot" of a trained mammal’s brain (a lab rat for example) and then "imprint" it upon another untrained mammal’s brain (possibly a clone of the first), transferring the imprint of the first onto the second.

Given that the brain appears to operate as a sequence of electric signals, one should be able to read the signals into a device (digital, biological, hybrid, etc.). The reverse should also be true, that a set of signals could be mapped onto an existing brain and create a replica of the original at the time the snap shot was taken.

To “win” the bet, verification would be required that the second mammal was incapable of the task prior to the transfer. One way to accomplish this would be to use the stored “data” from the first to replicate the task in more than one new mammal. It would not be necessary to replicate all the brain functions to win the bet – for example a region of the brain could be copied (rather than the entire brain). In addition, the experiment would need to be replicated by three different scientific teams from different organizations.

Comments, questions, suggestions?

As I’ve contemplated the Eternal Life bet, I’m intrigued that there are no bets about human cloning. In addition, I noticed Stewart’s challenge for some near term (2 year) bets.

Would the following get any takers?

By 2005, there will be at least two verified human clones that will have lived 3 or more months post a 40 week gestation period.

Or is this just too certain?

"In addition, the experiment would need to be replicated by three different scientific teams from different organizations."

I don't know if you need to be quite that strict, providing that a) the results are published in a reputable peer reviewed magazine and b) there are not experiments of similar repute carried within a fair timeframe done that _disprove_ the effect.

I think bets are more interesting when the result is a little 'up in the air'. I have no idea whether the prevailing opinion will be for or against your bet as worded there. It would be interesting to see how it turns out if you go ahead.

"By 2005, there will be at least two verified human clones that will have lived 3 or more months post a 40 week gestation period"

I don't think that is too certain, although it is quite possible. I personally would add the caveat that if they live past 3 months by 2005 it should still count as valid bet even if they were not confirmed to be clones until some (shortish) time _after_ 2005.

There are currently occasional (dubious) claims about reproductive human cloning taking place. I would not be _too_ surprised if one or more of them turns out to be true but your proposed bet is far from a given. My guess would be a small, but non-trivial shot at YES (maybe 1 in 5 or 1 in 10). Of course I do tend to be more pessimistic than some. [Or to put it another way others are more optimistic than they should be ;-)

How about ...

A court either in the United States or the European Union will rule before 2050 that a man or woman born with one identity is entitled to the property of a man or woman born with a different identity, on the grounds that the second person's identity has been transferred to the body of the first person by some means the court deems reliable.

Interesting use of a court ruling. First time we've seen that here I think.

The snapshot idea is definitely not possible, at least in the way you phrase it; there's a lot more to the brain's operation than electric signals, although admittedly most neuroscientists would agree that they're the most important component. You have to deal with the presence of chemicals, hormones and the individual properties of the neurones themselves; contrary to popular belief, neurones are not merely the biological analogue of switches or transistors. For example, different neurones may respond to different neurotransmitters in significantly different ways.

Plus, the structure of the neural network is of utmost importance, and I don't think you'll ever find two mammals that have exactly the same structure, not with several billion neurones and two orders of magnitude more synapses - and hence you won't be able to do any copying. For the same reason, I don't think you could copy regions of the brain either.

It's an interesting idea though, and you'll find that the strong AI people would see this as a prelude to full brain uploading (which is a entirely different kettle of fish...)

I'm not sure why the amount of 5-10k is an important number for someone that wishes to pass on before the bet may be won or lost "I'm most interested in bets that can be resolved within my lifetime, selfish as that may be - so I'm interested in ideas that make the bet a long shot (no pun intended) while still feeling achievable.
This is irrevelant to the bet but if in 2050 you do win the bet the 5-10k will be more like $5-10. I admit I might be exagerating a little bit. Why don't you either a.) use the stadard $1000 bet which you might find more would be interested in or b.) cut a check for $100 right now to your favorite charity and put your mind at rest knowing that you helped the needy while you WERE alive.

"This is irrevelant to the bet but if in 2050 you do win the bet the 5-10k will be more like $5-10."

The money bet isn't kept in a sock under the mattress you know.

I removed some posts that had devolved into interpersonal bickering.

Discussion about the investment of Long Bets stakes is welcome over in the "Improve Long Bets" discussion. (The Farsight Fund aims at 8 percent "real" growth on average over the long haul---the term "real" in financial discussions always means taking inflation into account.)

This discussion is about prototype bets.

I don't know how many people have read Samuel Huntington's article "Clash of Civilizations?" (Forign Affairs, Summer 1993), but it predicts the next major conflict will be between civilizations. He sees the major Civilizations as including Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American, and African. My bet would be something to the effect of:

"A clash of civilizations, close to the one outlined by Samuel Huntington, will occur and be resolved by 2050. This will include a major war, a drastic revision of international borders, as well as the destruction and/or creation of multiple sovereign states."

I'm sure I could get someone to take me up on this bet. However, due to my status as a student, I have no money and therefore need substantial backing. I would appreciate other comments as well.

I like the topic, but I want more clarity about 'victory criteria.' Please critique:

"Before the year 2050, a war involving the mobilization of more than five million troops will have occured; following that war, the membership of the General Assembly will have increased or decreased by two or more nations from whatever it was prior to hostilities; and the two largest contributors of troops will be from 'clashing civilizations.'"

Here's the bet:
By the year 02050 an athlete with mental retardation sponsored by supporters of Special Olympics, and perhaps Special Olympics directly, will be the first astronaut with mental retardation in space.

How would this be significant?
Over 1 million people with mental retardation in 150 countries worldwide are current athletes. This would be a significant event in the history of achievements for people with mental retardation.

What I'm looking for:
A team to place capital towards this bet, the sum of which will be donated to Special Olympics International*, given the nature of Special Olympics regional organizations and international organizations, I believe it would be best to have the funds go to this organization and not other regional / national organizations.

*Special Olympics 1325 G Street, NW / Suite 500 Washington, DC 20005 Phone: 202.628.3630 / Fax: 202.824.0200

How about this for a bet: By 2010 Silicon Valley will no longer be the epicenter of technology development and manufacturing. Like the automakers in Detriot headquarters may remain, but the number of information technology workers still in the field will be a shell of what it used to be.

Manufacturing has long moved to China, Taiwan and the rest of Asia. Software development is mostly done in Bangalore and Russia or other low-cost locales. The remaining domestic industry will be made up of service companies that are scattershot over the US, technical support offices, and small, niche players.

While this creates a real estate depression in the Bay Area and a recession in California the rest of the world prospers as it did when manufacturing jobs made the move a decade earlier. Eventually a middle is reached, where salaries in formerly very cheap locales rise to meet demand, but nowhere near what was thought as being a good salary in the peak of the bubble years.

How would you define the terms so that it would be clear that the bet had been won or lost? If it were based on revenues, aren't the majority of software dollars earned outside of Silicon Valley already (Redmond, Armonk, and wherever Oracle is base spring to mind)? If it were based on developers, aren't the majority of developers working outside of Silicon Valley already?

Perhaps "The attendance of at least COMDEX outside the United States will exceed the attendance of any COMDEX inside the United states by the year 2010."

How about this: On October 1st 2004 Saddam Hussein will still be ruling Iraq...

I think you should make that bet. You would probably get a taker. And its always the same risk for the particpants, the winner is really the charity selected by the winning bettor. Both bettors pay out at the start.

I would like to, especially if it helps generate discussion and thought on all the issues surrounding the current situation, something that seems to be sadly lacking.
I will think about it.
The problem is that I shouldn't really be spending that kind of money...

Dr. Johnjoe McFadden of the school of Biomedical and Life Sciences, University of Surrey, UK, has written a paper entitled: "Synchronous Firing and its Influence on the Brain's Electromagnetic Field--Evidence for an Electromagnetic Field Theory of Consciousness." His theory has the ring of truth, and I propose that it will be verified as true within the next few years. You can read his paper here: http://www.surrey.ac.uk/qe/PDFs/cemi_theory_paper.pdf

By the year 02102, linguistic communication with other species on Earth (e.g. sign language with wild or semi-wild apes) will confirm a set of beliefs and activities that can be widely agreed-upon as a religion.

Are you serious? It's potentially very fascinating...if your arguments are based on any research or social theory...I'd like to know your arguments.

In the universe (as currently known to science) the human race (as currently known) can only exist for a finite length of time.

I categorise the possibilites as

a) The universe _isn't_ as currently known to science - in such as way as to allow the human race to exist indefinitely [strictly speaking this over-laps with other possibilities - the only way to know the human race will exist forever it to wait until forever is over].

b) The human race will cease to exist through external causes (e.g. sun nova, asteroid collision with Earth, heat death of the universe, alien invasion :-) etc.)

c) The human race will cease to exist through internal causes (terminal environmental damage, biowarfare, nuclear warfare etc.)

d) (probably a subset of c) The human race will cease to exist as _currently_ known (evolve beyond recognition, genetically engineer beyond recognition, transformation / translation into machine / energy form, etc.)

Being a little pessimistic, I think 'c' is the most likely.

I don't think I'll bet on this myself, but someone else might like to take it up.

I don't think I'll bet on this myself, but someone else might like to take it up.

It seems to me that the only possible winner from this bet would be the Long Bets Foundation. They could spend the money themselves and wouldn't be held accountable until the extinction of humanity! (Even then, who's gonna come after them to get it back?)

It seems to me that the only possible winner from this bet would be the Long Bets Foundation.

Not necessarily, in case (d) humanities' successor may hold the successor of Long Bets to the bet.

It might also become generally agreed that case (a) is correct - before the 'end of infinity'. For example if it was certain that [1] the many world theory was correct, and [2] that the universe goes through infinite cycles of compression / expansion and [3] it is possible for human beings to survive from one cycle to the next then it would probably be statistically impossible for the human race to cease to exist.

Here's the thing, as I see it:

This kind of hinges on the word "confirm", and maybe an arbiter of what does or does not constitute "linguistic communication".

Otherwise, I'd say, everything necessary to fulfill the bet has already fallen into place.

The thing is that it seems pretty clear to me that just about *anything* "can be widely agreed-upon as a religion". As a result, you don't need any special or particular communication with Washoe, et al, to satisfy this bet.

And since religion is characteristically based on faith and not rationality or empiricism, the word "confirm", here, seems to require a soft definition.

Maybe the bet ought to be worded something more like "By the year 02102, linguistic communication with other species on Earth (e.g. sign language with wild or semi-wild apes) will lead to a major human religion." And probably you'd want to qualify "major".

I wouldn't want to bet for or against it, myself. You never know what people will believe. I mean, I'd be surprised if a large percentage of US Christians switched to Hinduism in the next fifty years, but it could happen.

`Otherwise, I'd say, everything necessary to fulfill the bet has already fallen into place.`

Can you qualify this statement? Its a rather sweeping one.

I'm not sure I agree that anything can be widely agreed upon as a religion. There are certain rules that need to be adhered to when labelling something a `religion` as opposed to a `philosophy` and I think a `belief` is also different.

Unless you mean `widely agreed upon` to mean laypeople calling something a religion even when theologians and sociologists say it isnt.
In which case it would be easy...after all, the common perception of modern science is controlled by what reports the news people happen to get their hands upon at a particular time, regardless of the truth of the matter. Just as common perceptions of religion are affected by reports of child molestation or fundamentalist violence.
I think `widely agreed upon` maybe needs to be changed...

There are certain rules that need to be adhered to when labelling something a `religion` as opposed to a `philosophy` [...]

Well, that's a matter of semantics, and the opinion of what is or is not a religion will vary with the individual. Personally, I'd say that a key difference is that a "philosophy", properly, should be built upon reasoning, whereas a "religion" is generally based on faith that defies reasoning, often a dogmatic faith.

But, ultimately, because it's a semantic and cultural term, I'd say it's fairest to allow the adherents of a given belief system to have the final say as to whether or not it's a religion. In other words, if my neighbor has a set of practices and beliefs and he says it's his religion, I may not agree that it is, in fact, a "religion", per se, but in the end his say-so trumps mine on that subject.


Unless you mean `widely agreed upon` to mean laypeople calling something a religion even when theologians and sociologists say it isnt.

By "widely agreed-upon", in the absence of a specific definition from the original phraser of the proposed bet, I would mean that a lot of people -- regardless of their laity or profession -- agree on it. How many is "a lot"? I don't know; it's subjective. Maybe ten thousand?

But the bet doesn't say "will be widely agreed-upon". It says "can be widely agreed-upon". A lot of things are widely-agreed upon despite not being well-supported, in a critical sense, so clearly the capability here does not rely on the opinions of theologians and/or sociologists, et al.


It's also occurred to me, by this time, that Paul W. Bennett may have meant not that communication with animals will confirm a set of religious beliefs, but rather that it would indicate a religion.

The bet, as phrased, seems to mean that communication with animals will serve to bolster (confirm) a set of beliefs (ie, human beliefs) that could constitute a religion. But maybe he means that communication with animals will indicate religious thought among animals. Which is a very different sort of bet.

If the latter, then the only questions I'd have are "How sophisticated does animal theology have to be to pass the test?" and "Does it have to be communal or do individual animal belief systems qualify?" Because anyone who's had a dog or cat has witnessed worship-like behavior from their pets, including pragmatic ritualistic behavior.

Frex, at feeding time, your dog or cat may perform ritual behavior that has no apparent causal relationship to getting food, but because they have faith that you will feed them if they do what they've become conditioned to do at feeding time, they do it anyway. This could easily be construed as cargo-cult behavior; pets don't know why it works, but when they go through the motions, they get fed. (Their behavior may not actually be causal, but they don't know that.)

Because we can't communicate well with cats and dogs, we have no way of knowing what the internal mental process is at such times, so it would be awfully premature to conclude that it actually is religious behavior, even if it certainly resembles it. (It's less involved than a rain ceremony, but it's also statistically more successful.) But with animals that we might have a better chance of communicating with . . . yeah, it could easily be construed as religious behavior.

Male gorillas often beat their chests ecstatically in response to lightning. No doubt, if they could talk to us about lightning, they'd have some strange things to say about it. Combine that with ritual behavior that has no causal relationship to the physical phenomenon . . . and you could easily make a case for it being religious in nature. No pun intended.

It seems to me that the only possible winner from this bet would be the Long Bets Foundation.

Not necessarily, in case (d) humanities' successor may hold the successor of Long Bets to the bet.

I suppose that is theoretically possible, but then the charities involved would have to benefit non-human charities as well. (For example, "Habitat for Humanity" would be a bad one to pick if you were betting on humanity's extinction.)

The issue that seems harder to resolve is exactly how one would win if betting that humanity would NOT go extinct. Even if humanity is still around in a billion years, one's opponent still might not cede the bet arguing that the species might yet die off, "someday."

I was assuming that he was referring to religion within the (non-human) animal kingdom, and not animals providing evidence for an existing human religion.

In this kind of thing, semantics are important, I am fairly certain that there is a set definition. Just because my next door neighbour says he has a religion does not make it a religion...he might say its a religion, but there are standard definitions as used by professional people.

The `widely agreed upon` I think would be up to whoever decides to take the bet. As it stands (especially with the use of the word `can`) it is far too vague so I'm assuming that it would be negotiated. I think it would probably have to be verging on 50% of the total number of people who can reasonably be expected to have come across the research, viewed the documentary, seen the news item by the bet deadline. Because if you just take 10,000 then it could be said that it is widely agreed upon that UFOs exist, but it is also widely agreed upon (probably more so...) that they dont.

I think there is one more point worth making about behaviour in the context of faith.
With regards animal behaviour and rituals, dont confuse conditioning with faith, the two are completely different. Conditioning arises because something works, faith does not require any previous evidence that it works. Look at what the New Testament writers had to say about faith, for example. Its about hope, the hope of things that havent happened but have been promised. Keep praying even if there seems to be no answer.
Animals dont just do tricks on the offchance, they learn that if they do them they get a reward. And then certain behavioural traits can become more than that, for example dogs licking the side of your mouth in the same way as hyena cubs do so in order to make their mother regurgitate food for them. Even though the dog is licking your mouth and never gets fed, the they won't stop doing it. But that does not constitute *religious* faith, as there is no awareness of why they do it (in the same way that a baby has no awareness of why it cries when it is hungry).
It doesnt constitute a religious belief. You can still say that they have `faith` that it works even though they have no awareness of why. But then my faith in say gravity or the keyboard I am typing on has nothing to do with religion.

When you take words like `believe` and `faith` and put them in a religious context, you have to use the religious definition.

Much more interesting however is the thing about gorillas, and I admit that I don't know anything about primate intelligence. Its interesting that the famous lass who studied gorillas (sorry, cant remember her name but Im sure you remember, its the woman who inspired that Sigourney Weaver movie I think) did not give us evidence for religion.

Paul Robbins said:

Just because my next door neighbour says he has a religion does not make it a religion...he might say its a religion, but there are standard definitions as used by professional people.

Bah. Who gets to decide? And from where do they derive their authority? Metaphysical matters are non-scientific, non-objective. You can have a sociological definition of religion, and an anthropological one, and a psychological definition of religious faith or behavior, but those definitions aren't objective. They're just dependent upon a particular perspective.

Probably, the bet should determine which perspective would be used. But I say, if your neighbor says he has a religion, then it's a religion. The government may not recognize it; the pope may call it heresy; you may not agree it's a religion. But you're not the boss of him.


I think we can all agree that "widely agreed upon" is too vague. And, actually, the last polling data I saw indicated that more than 60% of people in the US, frex, do believe that UFOs are or probably are alien spacecraft. So, yeah, "widely agreed upon" is problematic.


Conditioning arises because something works, faith does not require any previous evidence that it works.

I understand what you're getting at, but I don't agree. First of all, conditioning is not a response to causal results; it's a response to incidence. If you do a rain dance, and later it rains, that can condition you to expect rain dances to bring rain, but it does not indicate a causal relationship. The rain dance is still a matter of (essentially religious) faith.


Animals dont just do tricks on the offchance, they learn that if they do them they get a reward.

I'd say that that's an assertion that's impossible to support. Pets do a lot of strange things, engage in a lot of mysterious behavior. Some of it is repeated and (we think) understood; some of it is repeated but not understood; some of it isn't repeated (as far as we observe).

Sure, some repeated behaviors are reinforced by "results", as you put it, but not all. Dogs, I find, are especially prone to overly hopeful behavior. If a dog fetches its own leash, and it's not time for its walk, but you find the act so pleasing that you take it for a walk anyway . . . it may very well show up again and again, month after month, at the wrong time, with its leash, very hopeful, even if you never again take it for its walk at the wrong time.


Similarly, you argue that animal behavior can't be construed as religious because they have no awareness of why they behave that way. I don't see how you can demonstrate that this is true. We don't know enough about animal consciousness to make a strong case one way or the other.


Sigourney Weaver played gorilla researcher Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist, I believe the film was called. Actually, I haven't read much of Fossey's work, and I have no idea if she commented on any possibly religious aspect of gorilla behavior.

This is quite a lot of discussion for what is after all only a prototype bet. Maybe it should be made a formal Bet, and the discussion can go on years.

The discussion would go on for years!

Opening up the `What is the definition of a word` argument is not what this site is about, and we wouldnft get anywhere...as a theology graduate who is currently teaching English, I am speaking from experience here!

If the bet became reality, then a decision would have to be made. I am guessing that the bettors would go with a consensus view that can be shared by professionals in the field of theology, sociology, anthropology, psychology, whatever, and also be accepted by the majority of laypeople. In this case, I think it's not that difficult to do. I think there probably is one, already, although it is not something I have ever looked into.
Authority is derived from this consensus.
It might not be what a word means to one specific individual, but when making a bet a standard definition has to be found.
There was, a couple of years ago, a world religious convention, it would be interesting to see what the qualifications for being invited were. I know a lot of Christians were upset that a bunch of witch type people attended.

Conditioning requires that at some point the action got the desired response. The more often that happens, the more likely the animal is to repeat the action, although they are likely to repeat even if after a while they stop getting the desired result. Standard (UK) school biology taught me that when you teach animals tricks, first you reward them every single time they do it, and then after a while you only reward them sometimes. The pattern has been set in their mind so they still do it on the offchance.
Talk to an animal trainer, they will confirm this.

You could argue pretty well that human religious behaviour is the same. But it does differ in some key areas. If a dog has no idea what a lead is, it is just as likely to pick up another household object. But after learning what a lead is and what it is associated with, it goes for the lead. Religious faith does not work in the same way, as it sometimes requires no previous experience. God says to Abraham `go` and Abraham goes.
Religious faith is not just about `I want something, I do this, I get it` there is also the whole `leap of faith` element. People do incredibly risky things in the faith that its what their deity wants them to do, even if it risks death. Or make a hard decision and stick to it in the face of all evidence that it was the wrong one, because they believe that it was the decision they were supposed to take.

Ifm not arguing that these things are impossible in animals, I am arguing that I have yet to see any evidence. I donft think animal brains are complicated enough to do that sort of reasoning. Feel free to prove me wrong, I am speaking from the point of view of uncertainty, as opposed to saying `this is what I think is the truth` so Im open to what anyone has to say on it.

Religious faith is different to faith in people. My own personal opinion is that dogs for example do have faith in their owners. Ifm not saying that they are incapable of `actual` love and that its all down to conditioning, but I am trying to avoid the trap of anthropomorphism, which is one that pet owners especially can fall into.

It is possible that the more intelligent animals have religious type thoughts, we already know of animals doing things purely for `enjoyment` (for example, dolphins surfing).
But looking at human history, it was at a certain level of physical, cultural, and social evolution that manifestations of religious thought began to become apparent. Our problem is that all we have is archeology, which points more towards group activities or activities requiring a skilled mastery of tools.
But in the terms of the bet (which isnt about the possibility of religion in animals, but our figuring it out), take the earliest point in which it can reasonably be argued that ancient man became religious, and I think they were still streets ahead of any other animal.

Its a very flawed argument I know, mainly because at the end of the day we don't know enough about animal consciousness, but that is in a way another point in my favour...we dont have that much time to find out if their brains are capable. We still dont know enough about human physiology and sociology to know whether we are genuinely religious or not.
I suppose 100 years is too long for us to realistically predict where the required scientific disciplines will be, especially as they are perhaps the most unpredictable.
I personally think that if there is a God then it can communicate with animals and that they probably have some sort of sense of its presence or existence, although Im not sure if that necessarily means they would have a set of beliefs.

If the bet was proposed, Id consider it. My funds are rather limited, there are a number of bets I'm seriously thinking about but I would only be able to consider one, and maybe not even one.

My apologies for writing so much...

The short long term bet made me think about what will happen in the middle east.

“How about this: On October 1st 2004 Saddam Hussein will still be ruling Iraq...”

Too easy and not a major social change – apart from Saddam. More interesting is . . .

Actions taken by permanent members of the UN Security Council, singly, jointly or partially, during the 2003 calendar year will by 2010 have been a primary cause of major geopolitical upheaval in the Middle East.

Expansion & Clarification:

“Actions taken by permanent members of the UN Security Council” – military force

“Singly, jointly or partially” – The USA unilaterally, with allies (Britain, France?), with the full or partial blessing of the Permanent members, or A.N.Other member (china?)

“By 2010” – allowing historian, pundits and other interested parties to 2015 to determine whether it was a cause or just historically prior.

“Have been a primary cause”– Use of primary is weak. Necessary as opposed to accidental would be better.

“Of major geopolitical upheaval” – The majority of the states existing in the region will be recognisable as functioning democracies that have free and fair elections which the international community does not need to monitor. There will also be sufficient changes in national boundaries as to require mapmakers to rename states, alter borders, remove states, create them or mark areas as uninhabitable.

“In the Middle East.” – Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen and the Gulf States. (Palestine/Occupied territories I am including under Israel/Jordan which is another argument, Iran is significantly different in many ways –culturally,
politically, ethnically – and is possibly better as Central Asian, Turkey is in the process of trying to identify itself with Europe rather than Asia and is significantly culturally different).

Explanation:

There are two possible scenarios which illustrate minimax consequences of the action(s) and which lead to similar conclusions.

1. Early 2003 coalition forces invade Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein. Resistance is swiftly crushed and Saddam Hussein is killed or flees into exile. Iraq becomes a protectorate of the United Nations, which has a mandate to promote democracy, the rights of man and economic growth. This is successful with vast amounts of foreign direct
investment from the US, Western Europe and Japan. The success of the ‘Iraqi experiment’ puts significant pressure on the less liberal regimes of the region and increasing unrest eventually causes events similar to
1989.
(Interesting corollaries of some of outcomes here with a western friendly government in Iraq oil supplies are assured and American investment/subsidies to the region collapse – Israel/Palestine both lose their backers and a slowly improving armed truce results. The American
defence industry goes bankrupt with the loss of petro-dollar fuelled purchases from Saudi et al.)

2. Early 2003 coalition forces invade Iraq to depose Saddam Hussain. Major uprisings occur in North West Iraq as Kurdistan declares its independence from Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Heavily engaged in ensuring an effective regime change in Iraq and unwilling to support the
Kurds or oppose them the US, and United Nations bewail the situation but do nothing. A major Palestinian uprising in Israel causes massive bloodshed on both sides, and topples the government of Jordan leading to a ‘Palestinian’ state. Southern Syria becomes another battleground and
the Syrians attempt to fight a two-fronted war. Religious ferment in Saudi Arabia puts intense pressure on the government of which the US is now increasingly critical. In self preservation the government expels all US military personnel and provides overt military support to Jordan.
After several months of high intensity conflict a situation similar to the Balkans War emerges. The UN lead by France and Russia slowly mediates a situation in which the warring parties disarm exhausted and viable
democratic states start to emerge from the ashes.

There are a significant number of assumptions in both of these arguments. Principally I am arguing for a positive catalyst in the first assuming the best possible outcome. People in it are reaching out for freedom and hope. In the second I have assumed that they (or significant
factions) will use the realignment of alliances as an opportunity for revenge. Both possibilities and the actual result will be somewhere in between. However the argument that there will be a net positive result
stands. Over the last decade and a half the UN and the EU have developed considerable experience in reconstruction and the development of viable democratic communities from the ruins of communism and civil war. Simply from self-interest the developed world would not leave the region to its own ends as the flames died down. The US would act through moral guilt (having caused it in the eyes of the world). The EU through one-upmanship on America (assuming they develop an effective foreign policy! ) but more so for exactly the same reasons that the EU was developed –
so that something so terrible never happens again.

Denis,
your predictions display more creativity than is generally found at other web sites treating this subject.
Would you do me a favor, now that it appears that Iraq might invite the Russian Federation to insert observer troops throughout Baghdad before an American invasion can be launched ? Please post revised predictions responsive to this new possible twist.

I think the phrase 'largely abandoned' is a nice touch. When it comes, as it inevitably will, it will closely resemble rats largely abandoning a sinking ship. There will be no mistaking it. Perhaps a charismatic third world leader will gather and focus the attention of the other 95% of the world's population and point out to them that in any plan to bring the West's standard to the 'less civilized nations' the carrying capacity of the planet has already been exceeded. Or perhaps our disgust with ourselves will lead to a dissolution of our 'one nation indivisible' similar to the Soviet collapse of only a few years ago.
Some would suggest that technology will find a way, that some new radical form of power generation will turn the tide, or that the raw materials to fuel such a glorious future are just outside our grasp, waiting for us beyond the orbit of the moon. If so they'd best be getting at it.
Given all of the above, I would still take the bet as stated. Another economic paradigm will have to be devised, but I seriously doubt it will happen in the time frame suggested. Human being can be amazingly resistant to change, especially when it involves their happiness and their 'welfare'. I doubt our children will see it. I would not be willing to bet that theirs will either. Push the end date back to the middle of this century and you might have a fair to middlin' chance of winning.

I wish 2.0 had come earlier, say last August.

I still think Osama bin Laden will not be videotaped alive before Sept. 11, 2004, but now I think it's three to one against rather than fifty/fifty. It would be rational to simply take the other side ... but what about adding a dice roll? "No bin Laden videotape OR a Long Bets representative shall roll 1 or 2 on a single sided fair die."

Is that too tricky?

What would you predict about Bin Laden for two years from now (still the minimum period)? Put it on the record as a Prediction and you don't have to worry about odds. (Something like odds would emerge from how the Voting goes on your Prediction.)

I believe bin Laden is either dead or incapacitated, and has been since early 2002. There are some difficulties with making an adjudicable prediction based on this belief. Consider the case of two popstars.

Elvis Presley has been able to live a posthumous existence despite a death certificate and an autopsy. One can read an eyewitness report of him buying a sandwich in July of 2002. Bin Laden's entourage would have a similar incentive to maintain a belief in their icon's continuing good health.

On the other hand, in late 1969, a rumor circulated that Paul McCartney had died in 1966, in a car crash. According to the rumor, those who knew the truth were simultaneously concealing it from the prosaic and revealing it to the poetic by planting clues in song lyrics and album artwork. Mr. McCartney's apparent vitality was explained as an artifice of plastic surgeons.

In light of the above, I feel the simple prediction "Osama bin Laden will not be alive in 2005" could prove to be contentious.

Earlier I suggested "no bonafide video tape" showing that he was alive after [an agreed-upon starting point] would be published before [an agreed-upon ending point]. If I had said "audio tape," then the recording released on November 13, 2002 would be a bonafide counterexample and conclude the bet, even if later on it were to turn out that the voice on the tape was not Osama's.

Perhaps we could use a judge to adjudicate? "A United States court will rule that Osama bin Laden is legally dead before [an agreed-upon time]." Although this scores high on the clarity scale, it feels different. It is more a prediction of how a lawsuit over bin Laden's assets would progress than his body temperature.

Any suggestions gratefully accepted.

Even as I prepare these paragraphs, the Associated Press reports that two of bin Laden's "fourteen to eighteen" sons have been arrested in Pakistan. Ahh, paternity is a mystery at the best of times, so I suppose it must be expressed as a spread.

"In light of the above, I feel the simple prediction "Osama bin Laden will not be alive in 2005" could prove to be contentious."

Contentious is okay. Alive or dead is clear enough. The proving one way or another can be left to research and discussion at the time.

Although 9/11 made many of us more aware of the risk we take by prominently displaying big shiny objects, we should not make the mistake of thinking that risk is a new one. In either case, all construction projects risk failure, attack, and sabotage -- and yet we haven't started building groundhuggers instead of skyscrapers; there are plans currently in progress for several buildings over 1500' in height.

We weigh risk against return, and, given the exponential cost- (and therefore profit-) per kilo advantage over rocket engines, I don't think that risk outweighs the return to be gained from a cheap, reliable method for lifting payload out of Earth's gravity well.

While we may or may not prioritize science or exploration requiring humans in space on a large scale any time soon, there is big money to be made lifting satellites -- and tourists -- to orbit. A tethered satellite (another way to look at the "space elevator" idea) might also make space-based power generation economically feasible -- if so, that would easily cover the cost of deployment.

I think it's a good bet.

Several of the Long Bets founders and staff are dying to make Predictions and Bets, including me.

Till now our policy has been that Long Bets and Long Now people should not make bets, because they might have undue influence on how the Bet is eventually adjudicated.

Three things I think overbalance that concern. One, Bets are decided quite publicly, and individual Bettors can be kept out of the adjudication process (by selecting outside judges, if necessary). Besides, most Predictions will not become Bets, and most Bet outcomes will be clear to all, so adjudication will be relatively rate in any case.

Two, it's good for people who work with Long Bets to use the whole process themselves, so they can experience exactly what other users are, which customarily leads to better service.

Three, people associated with Long Bets and The Long Now Foundation are personally and professionally interested in the future and predictions. They are likely to make Predictions and Bets of general interest.

What's your opinion? My thought is to try it and see how it goes.

My opinion is "go ahead." There is a moral hazard if Long Bets founders and staff are able to bet against an outsider, since the outsider's own check to Long Bets could be used as stakes. This hazard is diminished if Long Bets persons must make the first move.

It would be equally bad if a Long Bets person used someone's stakes or Prediction fee to buy anything personal, nevermind making a bet with it. That is misappropriation of funds, which financial oversight is designed to prevent. It is always right to raise that issue---I've seen it happen in other foundations.

I think your comments show you understand why I proposed the bet. As for the time frame, the relatively short term of the bet reveals how grave I believe our situation has become. Humans learn through trial and error. The scale of the social and environmental catastrophes about to occur are the result of 150 some odd years of abuse. We are about to reap the result of our mistakes and continued neglect, and I think our survival will depend on how we respond. The crux of that response will be the development of a socially and environmentally sustainable economic system.

[first post - be gentle]

Justification:
In the process of increasing our activity in space, we will eventually need to acquire resources from space (vs from the Earth). Filling this need will become a major phase in our progression into a spacefaring race.

In the mechanics of space flight, near earth asteroids are easier to get to than either the Moon or Mars. In the scale of human endevours, asteroids are a HUGE resource. Greater than anything we could consume in dozens of lifetimes.

The Moon and Mars will retain their scientific interest but will not be seen as having any significant material value.

These argument will push out a Moonbase for at least 50 years.

Along the way our technology for getting into and returning from space will shift from pure rocketry to something involving more aerodynamics (like the space plane proposals). Our technology for manouvering in space is already shift away from high thrust rockets to things like ion drives.

These changes will make it harder for us to justify the creation of equipment dedicated to landing in a large gravity well.

The Dream Vacation spots will be orbiting space stations. A high end adventure will be reliving the Apollo 8 trip around the far side of the moon. Even the ultra-rich won't have the money needed to buy a lunar landing.

Currently, in purely practical terms, we have virtually no experience in building space elevators. We have plenty of engineering theory, but I, for one, would be amazed if any system could be built without experiencing truly significant and unforeseen problems.

Moreover, we have about as much practical success -- in terms, again, of a space elevator -- using non-physical, ie, non-mechanical systems as using, say, carbon-fiber cables. So-called "lightcraft" that used beamed power have been developed on shoestring budgets and work quite well.

A space elevator built with that technology would have many advantages over any physical system, not least that it would require far less infrastructure. You need a big laser at either the top or bottom of your 'elevator shaft' (though you can have one at both ends, of course). And you need the lightcraft themselves, which are basically polished space modules without engines.

The power demands are not very different than those for a physical space elevator, and an orbital laser could easily use solar power. Naturally, there would be security issues, which is why ground-based (and hence less easily aimed) lasers might be more diplomatic. But either way, the start-up and maintenance costs would be enormously lower, as would construction time.

The traffic level is determined only by the number of lightcraft, number of laser systems, and power available. And the system is more flexible than cable-based systems, rotovators, etc. You can simply add flights to orbit at will, power permitting.

But best of all, there's no huge megastructure to come crashing down in the event of a catastrophic failure. At worst, if the lasers fail, parachutes and airbags can usually allow the single falling lightcraft to make a safe emergency landing.

I predict that by 2034, we will have an American President with an ideological philosophy that is far to the Left of the Democratic Party today... that our President's priorities for the country will be compared to that of Paul Wellstone, at the least.

I also predict that if G.W. Bush gets re-elected in 2004, that America's President will embrace a Socialist agenda by 2054.

Obviously, I don't predict that either of these things will be permanent, or otherwise last beyond one American President, only that they will happen, accordingly.

I don't have $1,000 to bet on this but it would be an interesting bet:
By the year 2100 more of the original predictors on Long Bets will have been proven right than those that have been proven wrong. If by 2100 3 of the long bets have not been desided than the bet shall continue until 3 of the bets have been settled.
Original Predictor: The person who approched Long Bet with the bet originaly
A Bet: A prediction that someone has taken an opposing side to and has placed money into the long bet foundation to support their side.
EDIT To Add: In the case of a tie based on the records desided by the deadline the next long bet settled.

Just a thought
-Joe Kavanagh

Idea:

(An extension of the classic Human versus Computer at chess idea)

By 2050 an Aritifical Intelligence will be developed that without specialized training can beat the world champion of any board game.

By "without specialized training", I mean the AI will have to learn like humans do (by playing games) and can't have it's code altered to preform better at a specific game.

By 2050 an Aritifical Intelligence will be developed that without specialized training can beat the world champion of any board game.

I think you'd want to change "can beat" to "can consistently beat" or "can decisively beat". After all, a child theoretically can beat an expert at, say, Monopoly -- if the expert simply has a very bad day. You'd want the system to be able to beat the human champion in a best-of-five contest, etc.

Similarly, I also think you'd want to change "board game" to "board game of skill", or somesuch. After all, some board games are entirely ruled by chance.

The moon has a significantly different material make up than earth. Some of those elements would be crucial in the production and use of space craft. If the world pulls its head out of its rear and focuses on space exploration, I foresee the moon as a launching point for exploration by the year 2100. The expediant developement of antimatter, fission, fusion, and laser engines could push a need for a weak gravity lauching point, and storage for vast amount of americium and plutonium. As soon as the developement of the perfect superconducter occurs, possibly from some undeveloped element (maybe element 115?), man will truly harness the four forces of nature and physics. I see these things being developed this century, setting up a moon launch pad fifty years earlier than your prediction. All that is necessary is a world catalyst,(asteroid coming near earth, hostile alien life engages us, extreme solar fluxes). If man doesn't continue bickering about stupid stuff, your prediction will most certainly come to fruition.

A U.S. president will be assassinated by 1 January 2040.
President defined as: While in office; having won election (but pre-inauguration); but not to include former presidents.
This is just an idea to bounce around, hopefully it doesn't get big brother to rape my privacy.

By 3003, at least one government will have recognized and assured basic rights for Artificial Intelligences equal to those of humans.
Since there's been a few interesting thoughts about robotics and computers, and making them aware and able to think, reason, and potentially feel, I thought I'd just include my own. I would not be willing to wager on this, but it's interesting nonetheless. Where do we draw the line between machine and a new, thinking form of life? If we grant rights to people, should we grant them to robots? Would they campaign for equal rights themselves?

The stage is being set for a renewal of the Space Race, this time with the US and maybe some NATO members versus China.

The issue at stake is Space Control. The problem with a military that depends heavily on satellites for targeting and navigational data is that the satellites can be destroyed by relatively crude technology - a bucket of nails moving toward most satellites is an almost certain kill. Even North Korea and Pakistan can do that.

Because of this, all of the stake holders in military satellites will want to be able to protect their gear, and be in a position to break the other fellow's space toys when a war happens.

The Moon is the logical place to base a space control facility - enough gravity to maybe stave off bone loss, all the ilmenite you'd want to heat up for oxygen and aluminum in the lunar crust, and possibly significant deposits of ice and helium-3 (useful if and when Princeton finally delivers fusion power plant technology). You'd send troops out on patrols in Earth orbit to intercept antisatellite missiles, preferably knocking them down while still in boost phase, so the pieces land on the bad guys. As a bonus, maintaining things like the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station becomes MUCH easier when there's all that traffic to and from the Moon.

A lunar base with its own nuclear reactors to provide the power to make oxygen from the soil, and maybe smelt aluminum could be largely self-sufficient, given strict recycling protocols.

I see at LEAST two military bases on the Moon before 2050, possibly as many as five or six - France, either acting alone or as the string-puller in a United Europe, Japan, China, us, maybe Russia (spacecraft are one of the last things the Russians are making money selling) , and the British/Australians/New Zealand. But count on it, we're going to see a real rush to build forts on the Moon.

Another reason for a military build-up in space is the hazard posed by celestial objects approaching the Earth. At least one such close approach is expected in the next fifteen years (although it is not supposed to pose a grave danger, it will pass within the orbit of the Moon).

It's not that we expect asteroids to be criss-crossing our part of the Solar System - it's just that even one hitting Earth would tend to ruin the human race's whole day.

At present, the preponderant source of terrorists and violent extremists in the Middle East is the Wahhabi sect of Sunni Muslims centered in Saudi Arabia.

Regardless of their motives, it's clear that rich and influential Saudi citizens are bankrolling Al-Qaeda and other Muslim terrorist outfits, as well as a worldwide attempt to destroy non-Wahhabi Islam, replacing it with a version of Islam which countenances violent jihad against the West in general and the United States in particular.

It seems to me that the Shia Muslims of Iran have a golden opportunity to serve as a badly-needed counterweight to Saudi Arabia's looming hegemony over Islam. All they would have to do is eschew terrorism - and enter into an informal partnership with... the United States.

A logical starting point would be the US and Iran working together to defend the fledgling, Shia-majority democracy in Iraq from the combination of Baath party loyalists and Sunni/Wahhabi fighters from outside Iraq.

Iran gains a secure western flank, something they have to want badly, and gets promoted out of the Axis of Evil. The US gets a friendly and quite large power in the Persian Gulf as an informal military ally, and possibly a stick with which to beat Saudi Arabia into dropping its secret support for Islamist terrorism. It could work.

Personally, although I agree that empery will soon become the dominating factor in the space race, I disagree with some of the particulars.

First, it looks increasingly like microsatellite networks will replace conventional satellites for military purposes. Microsatellites will range in scale from the size of a deck of cards to the size of a basketball, or slightly larger. They'll be inexpensive, as satellites go, deployed in groups from single launches (although they will settle into very different orbits), and disposable.

If a military surveillance system relies on a composite imaging system that needs six satellites out of a 'cloud' of sixty, only another nation with a highly advanced space program will realistically be able to compromise that system.

Second, manned military missions to space will be kept to a minimum. Sending humans into space is currently cumbersome, dangerous, difficult, and wildly expensive. Automated space vehicles are far cheaper and simpler and, for the vast majority of purposes, more effective.

Third, for the near future a moonbase, as a base of operations, would not be especially practical. Although the delta-V from the moon's surface to any reasonable Earth orbit is much less than from the Earth's surface, the moon is far enough away so that reaction times might be too long, and the moon's orbit guarantees that it will often be in the wrong place at the wrong time -- especially since an enemy won't have any trouble figuring out when to plan something.

The moon is a good place for a base that provides supplies and some manufactured goods, but a much better location for a military staging base would be in a handy orbit (with, say, a period of eight hours, so that it circles the Earth every eight hours) or one of the stable Lagrange Points, L4 or L5.

If you're going to have a moonbase and a big space telescope, it makes the most sense to put your moonbase at the south lunar pole, for a variety of reasons, and the telescope on the southern hemisphere of the dark side of the moon. (Dark side to eliminate radio interference from Earth; solar because the galactic core is in the southern celestial hemisphere.) At that point, retire the Hubble, do your observations from the moon, and radio images back to Earth.

But once you can go to the moon easily enough to build a proper base, going to Mars isn't significantly harder. Not of the same immediate strategic importance, but ultimately more valuable.

A logical starting point would be the US and Iran working together to defend the fledgling, Shia-majority democracy in Iraq from the combination of Baath party loyalists and Sunni/Wahhabi fighters from outside Iraq.

It's logical, I agree, but the folks currently in power don't want an ally in the Middle East; they wany to run the Middle East.

It's a shame because, you're absolutely right, it's a great opportunity that's slowly passing us by.

Israel. What do you think? Maybe I should stick with Iraq will become Islamic state much like Iran by 2015?

I don't think either Iraq or Iran is crazy enough to drop a nuke on a country which has at least 1,064 ICBMs on alert, any one of which can be reprogrammed in 30 minutes to take out THREE Iranian or Iraqi cities in a single launch. For that, you need the Saudis who are supporting Al-Qaeda.

For the same reasons, no one in the Islamic world is going to nuke Israel until they can be VERY sure that they can do all of Israel's nuclear arsenal in counterforce strikes. It sounds nuts, but the one thing we can do to assure the stability of the Middle East right now is to make sure that at least the Israelis have a "nuclear triad" of land-based nuclear missiles, nuclear bombs deliverable by dispersed strike aircraft, and submarine-launched ICBMs.

Why? Because Israel is small enough and has few enough airbases and other military installations that the Saudis or other declared enemies of theirs might well be tempted to try a massive counterforce attack (which needn't be really "massive" to swamp Israel) that would destroy Israel's nuclear arsenal in place while (incidentally) also inflicting extreme collateral damage to Israelis themselves. Two or three Israeli "boomers" - similar to the old George Washington/ Ethan Allen class - would pour cold water on that fantasy.

Boy, do I expect to get flamed for the preceding paragraph! I can only console myself with the thought that I'll be in good company - the late Herman Kahn was thoroughly calumnied by armchair scholars and the press for his seminal work "On Thermonuclear War," but as time goes on his analyses and predictions are vindicated more and more as the world becomes more multi-polar and politically fragmented - a recent development which Dr. Kahn had anticipated with startling clarity in his book (scary - my copy of On Thermonuclear War has a publication date of 1960).

I think that the chances are six-five and pick 'em of Iraq balkanizing into at least two, possibly three countries - the Islamic Republic of Iraq, comprising all Iraq south of and outside the "Sunni Triangle", Occupied Iraq, which would BE the Sunni Triangle, and Iraqi Kurdistan.

Getting back to the "who nukes New York?" idea, it's much more likely that the Wahhabis make a power play, try for a pan-Islamist federation across Southwest and Southeast Asia and Anatolia, and start using Islamic Bombs (which they may have already started receiving from Pakistan and/or the reactor/reprocessing complex the Chinese built in southern Algeria that nobody likes to talk about) to make political and theological arguments all over the West.

My bet would be that by 2015, Wahhabis of one stripe or another would either nuke Manhattan Island, or try very hard. Or they might use biowarfare to accomplish the same thing.

The major value that a large lunar outpost provides is a source of relatively cheap structural material.

At present, it costs US$5000 per pound to lift anything out of Earth's gravity field. Even if you take the admittedly sensible step of putting tactical installations at the stable Lagrange points, it may be cheaper - much cheaper - to mine and manufacture the materials needed to build them on the Moon and send them out to L4 and L5 than to repeat the comparatively costly process of sending structural members up from Earth to build the ISS.

As far as delay is concerned, any science fiction reader can tell you that we're talking a whole second and a half of tactical or strategic delay.

A lunar-based imaging platform has the strong offsetting advantage of being immune to kinetic or other kills in lower Earth orbit. No matter how many microsats we place in Earth orbit, the Dear Leader in Pyongyang can just keep on putting nails in orbit until he gets the bird we have watching his missile and nuclear weapons plants. Nails are cheap compared to satellites.

Speaking of L5, I have a copy of a study NASA published in the 1970s called "Settlements in Space" in which a number of mathematical models for things like L5 were explored - and one of the concepts aired was a scoop or net designed to catch shipments of ore from the Moon. It would be made of Kevlar or some similar impact-resistant polymer... and I wonder how much it would cost to use nets like these to scoop up space junk - little bits and pieces of old spacecraft, micrometeoroids which have been captured by Earth's gravitational field, nails from the Democratic Republic of North Korea, stray Islamist Bombs, whatever. We might wind up doing good while doing well.

Anyone who has the money for this bet is welcome to place it:

By the year 2100, a faster-than-light or warp drive (in either case, capable of getting its spacecraft from here to there faster than light could make the trip) will exist.

For the purposes of the bet, methods of navigating wormholes and coming out the other end in one piece are included. Any means of getting (for instance) to Proxima Centauri in less than four years qualifies.

I think that present developments in condensed-matter physics present ONE way to do this, and as the century progresses, physicists will find others as well.

Another prediction I can't afford to make, but anyone is welcome to sponsor:

Background:
1) Mad cow disease and chronic wasting disease are both very strongly suspected to result from infection of the host animal by entities called "prions."

2) While controversy exists on the exact nature of prions, it is generally conceded that they remain infective after attempts at sterilization that kill all other known infectious agents - even high doses of gamma radiation and incineration.

3) Despite this, there is no ban on burning animal remains infected with suspected prion diseases without thorough scrubbing of all particulate matter from the exhaust.

In fact, one company has already proposed to include mad cow-infected carcasses in the "feed stock" (their words) for a process in which organic trash is decomposed under steam and turned into burnable hydrocarbons. Of course, autoclaving has not been shown to be more effective than outright incineration in making prion-infected material non-infective.

Which leads to my prediction:

By 2010, there will be AT LEAST one case of mad cow disease or chronic wasting disease in a human which probably resulted from ingestion of prions from the air after incineration of an infected animal carcass.

Here's a page of asteroids which might pose a (very slight, but non-zero) risk of striking Earth before 2080:

http://newton.dm.unipi.it/cgi-bin/neodys/neoibo?riskpage:0;main

I am offering this in atonement for having posted an error on the subject here. In an earlier post, I said:

"Another reason for a military build-up in space is the hazard posed by celestial objects approaching the Earth. At least one such close approach is expected in the next fifteen years (although it is not supposed to pose a grave danger, it will pass within the orbit of the Moon)."

Actually, Eros, the asteroid to which I referred (and which I think did pass very close to Earth in 1969), won't approach any nearer to Earth than .178 AU, or about 16 million miles in 2012.

Even so, a cottage industry of sorts has sprung up around the fallacy that Eros is going to hit Earth, that the governments of the world are shining us on about this, yada, yada, yada.

In fact, Eros 433 is so big that astronomy sites and magazines regularly tell their readers to look for it with their home telescopes. Any college astronomy department could confirm or deny the Keplerian elements of Eros' orbit, and thus confirm or deny a significant risk of impact with Earth.

Long Bets readers can relax, it'll still be here in 2012.

For more info, see:
http://newton.dm.unipi.it/cgi-bin/neodys/neoibo?objects:Eros

Prediction (anyone with the bucks welcome to sponsor it):

Increasing concerns about editorial bias on the part of television news networks will cause a majority in Congress to call for the restoration of the US Federal Communications Commission's "Fairness Doctrine" (under which licensed broadcasters were formerly obliged to present a range of political and cultural comment, not simply the viewpoint endorsed by the staff or management of the broadcasters).

This could even happen under a wide enough interpretation of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform Act - certainly, if news broadcasts are slanted toward one party or ideology often enough, the effect would be effective circumvention of the provisions of that law; all large campaign donors would have to do is to go into the broadcast news business instead of purchasing advertising.

Some people would argue that this is already happening - that a pervasive pattern of sympathetic coverage of one party's issues over another's in news broadcasts is already overcoming current Federal Election Commission guidelines by allowing what is, in effect, unpaid political programming donated by the news departments of the major television broadcast networks.

A meaningful return of the Fairness Doctrine could result in a ideological shift toward the center in network news broadcasts, or at least a tendency for news networks to be more objective in their work.

Vance Frickey said: No matter how many microsats we place in Earth orbit, the Dear Leader in Pyongyang can just keep on putting nails in orbit until he gets the bird we have watching his missile and nuclear weapons plants. Nails are cheap compared to satellites.

This is actually incorrect. Space is very big, which is one of the reasons they call it "space". If the US can launch 100 microsats for what it currently costs to launch one satellite, and place them in widely differing orbits, then it will never be cost-effective -- or even plausible -- for simple kinetic-kill to take them out.

The "widely differing orbist" can all be thousands of miles apart and in different planes. To fill that volume with enough nails, for example, to give a break-even chance of destroying even one microsat per year would require tens of thousands of tons of nails being launched into orbit. No country on the planet could afford to do that, not by a long shot.

Vance Frickey said: I don't think either Iraq or Iran is crazy enough to drop a nuke [....]

It's not a question of whether or not the current leadership is crazy enough, but whether or not a capable future leader of either of those countries could be crazy enough. I don't see any reason why not.

All you need, in the end, is one person who's willing to make a suicide attack. It's even easier if that person isn't necessarily one of the people who'll be killed by the reprisal.

In any case, a nuke that hits NYC is much, much more likely to be delivered in the hold of a ship than by an ICBM, and it may be difficult to know who sent it. That may slow down reprisals quite a bit -- or lead to the wrong countries being targetted.

After all, Iraq was supposedly targetted because of 9-11, even though even the Bush administration now agrees that Iraq wasn't connected to 9-11. If Hussein had had a nuke he could have delivered, and if he'd known he was going to be taken out on any pretext anyway, he might very well have been all too happy to make a 'suicide' attack.

Mark J. Wojcik said:
"It's not a question of whether or not the current leadership is crazy enough, but whether or not a capable future leader of either of those countries could be crazy enough. I don't see any reason why not."

It might not even have to be the leader of either country. Consider that two of Pakistan's leading nuclear scientists were investigated because they were VERY close to Osama bin Laden, and were reported to have given him "special nuclear materials" - a term that usually refers to fissiles such as uranium-235 or plutonium-239 which can be used in nuclear weapons. The problem with nukes is that they're not going to get any HARDER to make as time goes on... so the next Timothy McVeigh may be able to do a much more thorough job

"All you need, in the end, is one person who's willing to make a suicide attack. It's even easier if that person isn't necessarily one of the people who'll be killed by the reprisal"

That's the disturbing thing about ObL and his crew - they HAVE to know that a large plurality, maybe even a majority of the American public knows that 9/11 was financially underwritten by members of the Saudi ruling class. Just for 9/11, a large percentage of Americans would not only authorize a nuclear strike on Saudi cities in retaliation, they'd gladly turn the keys to launch the strike themselves.

If ObL has nuclear ambitions, he, and not the Iraqi Shiites or the Iranians, is going to be the person who uses nukes on NYC.

"In any case, a nuke that hits NYC is much, much more likely to be delivered in the hold of a ship than by an ICBM, and it may be difficult to know who sent it."

Your point about delivery by ship is very valid - you may recall that Einstein suggested to FDR in his famous letter that ship-board delivery of nukes would be one way to do it. For an improvised nuclear weapon, submerging the bomb in the bilges of a freighter might even improve the size of the nuclear explosion, since water reflects neutrons efficiently. You might do away with the need for a beryllium reflector in an implosion bomb that way.

However, we can determine the origin of any nuclear weapon from the fallout pretty accurately. Ratios between isotopes in fallout from a nuke can be used to not only determine what sort of reactor produced the fissile material, but which individual reactor among several with the same design did.

At the very least, we could easily identify the source reactor well enough to accurately determine the country which made the fissiles in any given nuclear weapon. The International Atomic Energy Authority has all the info we'd need for that.

Prediction: By 2008 we will no-longer describe the genetic code as linear or one-dimensional.

Argument and explanation: Translation of genetic information is sequential, but it is not linear. The classic linear paradigm holds that only one dimension of information is translated by the genetic code. The code supposedly translates tri-nucleotide codons into amino acid sequences, and that's it. From here we have a 'protein folding problem' that was ostensibly resolved by the thermodynamic hypothesis of protein folding. This hypothesis says that for every sequence of amino acids there exists one and only one spatial conformation at a global free energy minimum, and each sequence finds this minimum during folding. The linear paradigm of the genetic code and the thermodynamic hypothesis of protein folding are mutually dependant. If one is false then so is the other. If each amino acid sequence can and does fold in more than one way as a result of genetic translation, then our paradigm of the genetic code must be expanded to include a second dimension of genetic information.

I'm willing to wager a little money on this debate (already have) but I am new to this forum, and I don't want to be the classic new-guy idiot who just plain 'doesn't get it'. Your feedback will be appreciated.

Mark

Mark J. Wojcik said"
"In any case, a nuke that hits NYC is much, much more likely to be delivered in the hold of a ship than by an ICBM, and it may be difficult to know who sent it. That may slow down reprisals quite a bit -- or lead to the wrong countries being targetted. "

I just remembered that our technology for detecting nuclear weapons in the holds of ships is actually pretty good. In 1973, Israel was about to nuke Syrian tank formations coming in over the Golan Heights, which led the Soviet Union to surge several warships and freighters containing nuclear weapons through the Bosphorous Straits (thus through a narrow seaway controlled by NATO member Turkey), presumably to be in a position to nuke Israel in retaliation without using an ICBM and starting WWIII.

We knew about the Soviet movement of nukes because nuclear weapons constantly emit radiation of a given energy range and (for gamma radiation) frequency; the hold of a ship can't block 100% of this radiation.

Detectors on either side of a narrow strait or in a patrol boat passing near the hull of a ship can detect nuclear weapons in its hold more easily than you might think. I'd be willing to bet that these days, a freighter headed for Manhattan Island or nearby gets scanned for gamma and neutron radiation several times before it makes it closer than 50 miles.

I'd say that geneticists and molecular biologists implicitly concede the truth of your bet already.

Why? Because people in genetic engineering and molecular biology DEPEND on certain sequences of amino acids in certain locations along the DNA strand - "genes" - to create - "code for" - certain biological phenomena.

Since we know that many proteins are only active because of their tertiary and quaternary structures, the ones to which you refer in your bet, the assumption that we already concede that the folding and other physical structure of proteins is coded for by DNA sequences should logically follow.

It's like this Web page, which can be perceived either as a string of ones and zeros at its most basic level of existence, or as a file containing a certain arrangement of computer characters (ASCII code), or as instructions for a browser to create the pattern of pixels on the monitor screen we're looking at right now - or at its highest level, part of a discussion between people located all over the planet. Every interpretation I just listed is equally true.

So with the things for which DNA sequences code - we can be looking at two long-chain amino acid polymers cross-linked helically, a sequence of thousands of nucleotide base pairs, a long string of instructions for mitochondria and ribosomes to make chemical reactions, or the "instructions" to make a protein, a cell - or a baby.

All are equally true, and no additional paradigm need be created for us to understand or believe any of them.

Maybe I should revise the wording of my prediction, because I don't seem to be getting the point across. How about this: I bet that our simplistic view of the genetic code is wrong because the thermodynamic hypothesis of protein folding is wrong.

A protein is more than a sequence of amino acids, and the genetic code makes proteins, not just sequences of amino acids. There is a component to translation, or protein synthesis beyond a linear matching of codons with amino acids.

Mark,

Maybe I'm the one not getting it - but is there ever a one-to-many correspondence between a codon and the protein for whose synthesis it codes?

NB: By "one-to-many correspondence," I mean a state where, all other things in the particular organism's DNA being equal, one value of one specific codon can code for different shapes or foldings of a given protein; and neglecting cases where a specific protein can change its sterical structure after exposure to a biocatalyst such as a prion or changes in the surrounding chemistry.

Mark,

Thanks for sending the paper on silent mutations and altered protein folding dynamics (P. Cortazzo, C. Cervenansky, M. Martin, C. Reiss, R. Ehrlich and A. Deana. “Silent Mutations Affect in vivo Protein Folding in Escherichia coli,” Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications 293 (2002) 537-541).

I think I know where I got off on the wrong foot, now.

You're saying that the current paradigm states that variations in the sterical structure (folding, etc) of a protein are induced by ambient chemical and other thermodynamic factors, but a more correct model would attribute all such variations to "silent" mutations.

I agree. I think that it's incredibly dumb for people to blithely write off most of our genome as "junk DNA" simply because it doesn't appear to code for anything - sort of like writing "Here there be dragons" on the side of the map where we haven't sent any ships yet, back in the 1600s.

The default assumption (in my humble opinion) should be that ALL code in the genome of any living organism reflects traits that at one time or another added survival value; otherwise the organism wouldn't have been able to compete and survive.

All codons for which we haven't discovered an apparent trait should be tagged for further study, not called "junk."

I misunderstood what you meant by the thermodynamic hypothesis of protein folding - and I agree with you that it's a paradigm long overdue for Kuhnian destruction (as in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas Kuhn).

Congratulations - I think you're on the correct side of a major paradigm shift. Great bet!

Best regards,

Vance

I recommend to Vance Frickey and Mark White, before you head much farther down this road, that you read two pieces by Barry Commoner of the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems. The first, "Unraveling the Mystery of Life," is very much to the point of your discussion. It is available at the website of the Critical Genetics Project of the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems. Also, his article, "Unraveling the DNA Myth" from Harper's Magazine, February 2002, is focused on underlying problems with genetic engineering, but in doing so presents a strong argument against the Crick/Watson "central dogma" and a discussion of further factors involved in the creation of traits. It is also available at the same website.

David,

No offense, but I think that the existing understanding of how DNA works, while quite possibly incomplete, has been very strongly validated.

I mean, genetic engineering works, doesn't it? It seems to me that if our understanding of how DNA works is a "myth," then Genentech and the rest of the recombinant DNA industry would have fired blank after blank. Instead, most of the insulin now used in America is made by specially engineered E. coli bacteria (not the nasty O157:H7 serotype we hear about) in vats. Then there are the glowing mice, successful mammalian clones which are largely identical with the donor animal... all point to our understanding of DNA being largely correct - as far as it goes.

Where Mark and I agree is that this correct understanding of how DNA works is probably incomplete, not that it's a myth. Watson and Crick's work (and Rosalynn Frankline's, even though her major contribution to the discovery didn't earn her a trip to Oslo) has survived peer review, been reproduced all over the world, and has been used to successfully predict the genetic transmission of traits.

While we probably don't fully understand many things about protein structure that influence the expression of traits, that doesn't make the current theory invalid, simply incomplete. The edifice is sound, we just need to roof it over totally.

David,

Thank you for bringing that article to my attention. Perhaps I do not agree with the author's political position, but I do agree with his major premise that we have been led astray by the hubris of biochemists for the past half century. I actually think that a lot of what he is saying is 100% correct, but it is different in important ways from what I am saying.

My point is even more simplistic and fundamental than his: the genetic code is charged with more than creating a sequence of amino acids. The primary sequence of a protein is critical to the final properties of the protein, but there is more to making a protein than just making a sequence of amino acids. The shape of the protein is also somehow influenced by shape-based information, and I am saying that that additional information is being processed during translation.

It is easy to focus on gene sequencing and then confuse DNA with the genetic code, but they wholly different things. DNA is the hard drive and the genetic code is the CPU. I think that we have fairly and accurately charcterized DNA, but I think we have pulled a major scientific boner when it comes to understanding the genetic code.

Mark

By 2075 the nations of the Earth will decide that near Earth orbit is too crowded and take action to de-orbit everything out there. Then comes the weird part...

They will build The Earth Bubble, a giant nanobotic umbrella around the world. It will be only a fraction of an inch thick, but this self-repairing adaptive hot air balloon built around the planet will have advanced circuitry and the ability to upgrade itself using nanobots.

Anywhere on Earth, all you will have to do is point your antenna up and you will be able to access what will essentially be the world's biggest communication satellite. It will also have vast redundant computing power as well as data storage. All portable devices- mp3 players, cell phones, gameboys, remote controls- now barely recognizable in form and probably implanted into one bioware device- will access The Earth Bubble.

A ring of space elevators around the equator will deliver anything to the space beyond, -mostly people up, goods down, since we may be doing most of our manufacturing in space.-

When meteors hit The Earth Bubble the smallest ones, space dust and the like, will be absorbed into the nanobotic mesh and consumed for their ram materials. Bigger strikes will rip holes in the bubble, but it's tissue like substance will tear so easily that only a small section will be torn away, and the hole quickly replaced by nano-repairs. Small pieces that fall into the atmosphere will be programmed to self-destruct as they enter the pressure of the atmosphere, and will drift to Earth as dust, just like most meteors do today.

The greatest gains to the world economy from this project won't be from the bandwidth and coverage it provides, the vast computing power, or even the vast ability to monitor the Earth constantly, but the nanobotic substances ability to very how much light it lets through, which along with advanced weather models will allow it to shade Phoenix, Arizona when it is 120 degrees out, converting the extra sunshine into solar energy to power itself, or to focus, or even re-emit the light over Chicago to burn off clouds for the Red Sox-Cubs inter-league match up of the 2074 World Series.


For quick reference, the Earth Bubble will:

Be Self-Repairing
Replace the function of the Ozone Layer
Provide Weather Control
Be environmentally friendly
Be the nexus for all electronic/optical communications
Provide Vast Computing Power
Monitor the Earth
Anchor Space Elevators
Make us the envy of all our space neighbors!

Or...

The proposed Earth Bubble will be laughed off the stage because of its silly name. (Really, any suggestions for a better name for this thing?)

There is a widely held view among many- possibly even most- of my (mostly left-leaning) friends and associates that the United States will experience societal collapse. Particularly, one acquantance and I have made a $5 bet that it will occur by 2034; he, arguing for it, says, "It's like pornography- hard to define, but you'll know it when you see it." Aside from the hazy line in my own mind between porn and erotica, I was motivated to take him up on it out of optimism for the rule of law and justice. So, I thought this forum was a good place to bring it up, and perhaps make it into a Long Bet. I would certainly take the optimistic side, arguing against societal collapse by 2034; the problem, as with many bets here, is deciding exactly what societal collapse looks like.

He made all the typical arguments, ex. 1)capitalism most competative and 2)capitalism requires growth and thus 3)successful capitalism crowds out resources of planet, leading to collapse; running out of fossil fuels, topsoil loss, terrorism destabilizing, lack of manufacturing in United States, overvalued dollar, unsustainable agriculture, yadda yadda yadda- I have glossed over his arguments, as he and others can state them better. Result: catastrophic U.S. societal crash by 2034.

The thing is, I basically agree with many points, but think he undervalues issue complexity and democratic controls on certain "free" market excesses; what about governmental control, popular movements, democratic traditions, alternative, nuclear, and coal energy, and the growing sense in people that current agriculture is not workable, etc., etc... Also, add to that: large states and empires can ebb gracefully in some cases (i.e. British Empire waning thus far has brought no catastrophic loss at home (arguable)), and that may be the case in ours. However I tend to think my logic reflects my optimism rather than otherwise, so all these can be taken as my reasons but not the roots of my reasons.

I am mostly wondering 1)whether his bleak view is widely held among the watchers of this forum, particularly conservatives and libertarians, or is it mostly a leftist future-projection; and 2)whether 'societal collapse' could be cleverly defined in a few unambiguous words or conditions, so I could make a bet out of this baby.

Of course, I'm right,-
'Cause I'm on the side of truth, glory, and happy people making sweet joyous love in the organic fields of the fertile future! Yeah! MMMMMmmmm-hhhhmmmmmmmm! I'll see your bleak post-collapse scenario and raise you two homegrown tomatoes, a thimbleful of sense, half a gallon of foresight, half your civil liberties, and two of my brother's grandchildren! (well, maybe not the last two.)

What do you think? Yes, you there. Talk to me!

-Stefan

Your friend's argument seems Malthusian in essence -- basically, it's an argument that society will exhaust the natural resources available. The problem Malthus had (though he didn't live long enough to know it) is that societies usually adapt -- generally by developing new resources, or resources previously unused or unrecognized.

Malthus thought that there simply wasn't enough farmland to feed an ever-larger population. What he didn't foresee was improved agricultural techniques that could produce far more food from the same amount of land. Experts in the 1970s who predicted massage oil shortages (real experts) couched their doom in terms of extant production levels and known reserves. Production levels went up, and new reserves were found, so we still haven't run out of oil yet.

Similarly, if a really good cheap source of energy is found -- some kind of reliable and efficient fusion, say -- then the resources available to the planet will immediately expand exponentially. For example, in this theoretical case:

- Oil will not automatically become more plentiful, but less necessary and cheaper to extract and refine. Pollution-free gasoline can actually be synthesized from air and water, given cheap enough electricity, should we still need gasoline.

- Metal will be easily recycled, and carbon fiber / sapphire / diamond will also be used as major structural materials. Want more metal? An average metallic asteroid has over a trillion dollars' worth of metal in it, from iron and nickel to tungsten, platinum, and gold. Given enough cheap energy, getting that metal down here is no big deal.

- Food, too, can be synthesized from air and water, given enough cheap energy. That's how plants do it. To do that on an industrial scale would require substantial R&D, but it's far from impossible, and there are intermediate technologies (from yeast vats to soft nanotechnology) to make it easier. Plus, with enough cheap energy, you can build zillions of greenhouses and grow crops at an accelerated rate.

- Fresh water? Desalinization is a snap when you have loads of cheap energy.

- Real estate? Cheap energy leads to cheap industry. Build arcologies, floating cities, colonize Antarctica, build habitats in orbit (although relocating large populations to space is unlikely with any foreseeable technology).


It's not all rosy, god knows -- there are still plagues, environmental degradation, economic class wars, culture wars, and so on to deal with. But our species is very good at exploiting resources. Sometimes . . . you wind up with an Easter Island problem, but that's more the exception than the rule.

In 15 years or by the summer of 2019 it will have become common knowledge and accepted that all things religious was one of the world's greatest fallacies or hoaxes played on mankind by men in power. GOD (of any sect or type) does not exists. The concept (of a or any tpye of GOD) was used to divide and conquer the masses by fear of the unknown.

Regardless of one's own personal beliefs about religion . . . if this hasn't happened in the last 35,000 years or so, why would it happen now? In the US, for example, the trend has been toward greater religiosity over the last century, and especially since WWII.

Meanwhile, the anti-religious Soviet hegemony has broken up, and many analysts expect that China's anti-religious Communist regime will either collapse or relax its social control in the near future.

I would need to see some explanations of why such a monumental historical change is likely to occur before I could consider the prediction very credible. People generally seem to like religion, and I don't think it's going to go away very easily.

If completed or placed on a track for completion, the United Nations will establish a Space Agency for oversight and management of the International Space Station which will seek to consolidate Space Agencies around the globe into an ineffiecient Monopolative power over space exploration and development.

The UN might very well seek to consolidate various international space agencies, but it won't happen with existing political structures. The superpowers, which have the strong majority of space agencies, have no need or desire to give up control, especially since space agencies are usually semi-military.

The US, for example, is not going to dissolve NASA for a UN space agency anymore than the US would dissolve its military branches to be replaced by UN peacekeepers. As a result, there's no way that the UN will achieve a monopoly in space unless it was able to achieve an effective power monopoly here on Earth first. I don't think that will happen anytime soon.

Within the next 30,000 years, we have a good chance to say that religion is myth. I don't think before then.

I think space travel and thousands of years of contact with thousands of species are required. When we get a better idea of all possible worlds, we should see one we like.

It'll all depend on when can we first get started getting to know the universe.

On our own earth, there isn't enough life variance for us to give up religion.

Within 2000 years, we'll know enough about ourselves, psychology, and intelligence, that we'll know how to change education practices to create high IQ. The average college graduate will have an IQ over 170.

The harder part will be to change our nature. Will parents and schools let kids keep the childhood curiosity? Will we accept something like the Socratic method in schools and any form of relationship or public discussion? Will law and discipline be slowly replaced by open exploration?

Perhaps the prediction should be scientific reproducability of IQ under controlled conditions.

In much less than 20 years, it seems very likely, wealthy folks will have computer assistance that will vastly improve their memory, and possibly much of their cognition.

There are already companies working on small devices that would record virtually every piece of human speech that the owner hears; the device would then let the owner search through the recorded speech to recall any part of it.

Once devices like these become implants, or other technologies similarly alter areas of what are now considered integral parts of human intelligence, IQ may become pretty meaningless as a measuring stick. (It was never all that meaningful when applied to adults anyway.)

Consider that when my parents were in school, you were either good at math or you weren't. When I was in school, we were not allowed to bring calculators to math class, and teachers would check our watches to see if they had calculators built-in. My niece's high school requires that students own graphing calculators. The threshold of mathematical ability has already bowed to technology.

The modern game of soccer was invented in England and despite recent lackluster efforts, the current English team is one of the best in the world. The English Premier League, for instance, is undoubtedly the best domestic soccer league in the world and is a training ground for the very best international players.
The American record, on the other hand, is spotty - a quarterfinal appearance in 2002 being the only recent success of note. Soccer is neither a native nor a major sport in North America.
Despite this, and within the next 50 years, the US will win a World Cup before England. This is due to a variety of factors - including but not necessarily limited to American absorption of immigrants and their cultures, growing popularity of the sport among American youth, consistently increased marketing opportunities in soccer and American economic dynamism and social inequality, a factor that has contributed to the dominance of teams such as Brazil.

I’m willing to predict this if there’s anyone out there willing to take the other side.

We already have the capacity to remember much more than we can. Given a certain brain state or trace, people are able to recite books from memory.

A bad bet and not such an interesting one. :)

Within the next 500 years, scientists will, for the most part, no longer be looking at our genes to determine how we behave. They will begin to conclude that our psychology isn't bound by evolution. Darwinism, in so far, as it's explaination of and justification of genetic change, will no longer be the metaphor for biology.

We'll look at gender in a complete different way. Everything female, from a desire for monogamy or a natural mothering instinct will be shown to be not natural at all. Eventually we'll believe, what we've come to known as feminine, is not much more than the result of thousands of years of sexism. Eventually women will grow out of slavery (look at how women act in non-patriarchal tribes).

After a few millenia of independence, monogamy and marriage may no longer be the most common forms of sexuality and family organization. Perhaps patrinineal and matrinineal organizations will arise again. Then may not. :) Surely the mix of monogamy, polygamy, and other forms of polyamory (not bound by marriage) will return.

Monogamous love will perhaps begin to fade away. If raise and teach children different, if we accept them and let them be fee individuals, always in a state of becoming, we'll continue to be children all our lives, always learning and experience. People may start listening to each other instead of waiting to tell everyone else what they think. We may then stop to yern for the acceptance and understanding that's never given to children by their elders.

If work is ever eliminated (has anyone read Russell's In Praise of Idleness and continued to think about it?), we may be able to spend time developing our personality. Art may become important to people. Education, not as some form of preparing people for society, but as a method to become a whole individual may make it's reappearance.

In an unlimited time spawn, never ending, all predictions made, give or take a few, will come to pass, in one way or another.

I think that in the year 2009 there will be the new World War, in which many millions will die, this is more than a hunch it is a highly probable guess. i got this infoirmation from a reliable source, and very trulful at that, but it can exaggerate things that come in the furture, so this could be wrong but i have no doubt it will happen, and with the way things are going on around in the world, there could be the next WW3 sooner than we all think

i think that mankind will never tell themselves that their religion is not real, it goves them hope after they die, and a reason to live good. i think that the governmanet put this in peoples heads a long time ago to keep the people undercontrol and didnt expect it to carry on to today. One thing i do agree with is that eventually religion will not get in the way with government or law

I have doubts if religion will ever not get in the way of government or law. Religion in itself is a collection of ethics and beliefs. It founds the very way people look at the world, what they believe is good and evil. :)

As for religions of the world, I would't mind polytheism. I would much prefer the religion of many tribal cultures, people from 3000+ years ago, or Rome or Greece. Anything that didn't despise life, create mistrust among us, and hold us to be in original sin would be a nice change.

Ever see Eyes Wide Shut? I think Kubrick has done an amazing job of a mainstream examination of Christianity. Why does the doctor always introduce himself as a doctor. Notice how people change their temperament? Why is he the only one truly trusted?

75% of scientist in the future will believe that the universe is in fact infinite and not really big.

oh so true

I am just about willing to bet that of the four out of eight UN Millenium Development Goals to make definite predictions (1, 4, 5, and 6), no more than 1 will be achieved by the target of the 1st day of January 02015.

Background:

The UN Millenium Goals are as follows
1) Eradicate extreme policy and hunger. Explicitly, halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people living on less than $1 per day, and also halve over the same period the proportion of people living with insufficient food.
2) Achieve universal primary education. Explicitly, to ensure that children everywhere will be able to complete a course of primary education by 2015.
3) Eliminate gender disparity and empower women. Explicitly, to eliminate disparity in all levels of education by 2015, as well as achieving more general equality in politics and the workforce.
4) Reduce child mortality. Explicitly, to reduce by two thirds (from 1990 to 2015) the under-5 mortality rate.
5) Improve maternal health. Explicitly, to reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio (the ratio of the proportion of mothers from the poorest 20% who die during delivery to the proportion of mothers from the richest 20%)
6) Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases. Explicitly, to have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of AIDS, and to have done the same for Malaria and other "major diseases" (eg TB).
7) Ensure Environmental Sustainability. Explicitly, to integrate principles of sustainable development into country policies, reverse loss of environmental resources, halve the proportion of people without access to clean water and sanitation, and to have achieved an improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.
8) Develop a global partnership for development.

Rationale:
I believe the MDGs would be beautiful if achieved, but I'm not hopeful about the chances. Based on the UN's own figures from the 2006 report, we're behind on all fronts. I believe that in the main we will make positive progress towards these goals, but I don't think we'll actually achieve any of them, except just possibly goals number 4 6, and 8 (for a given definition of "partnership") in the intended timeframe. I have limited it to those with definite targets (1, 4, 5 and 6), to avoid too much wrangling over the outcome. Any takers?

Understanding of ourselves and our psychology is related to wisdom, not intelligence. IQ does not gauge anything related to how well-adjusted or self-actualised an individual is. IQ has very little to do with memory bulk.
You also need to take into consideration that IQ normalizes over time. So an IQ of 170 in todays terms, may be an average IQ in the distant future (90-110 IQ)

2000 years in the future you are looking at a whole different human environment. There will likely be no college because everything you need to know will be either innate or universally accessible. If the advent of AI eventuates then the need for brilliant humans, apart from "controllers", is reduced. In evolutionary terms, the golden age of humanity may have passed by this time, with all our conceivable obstacles being conquered, human development may have stagnated long before this point.
Perhaps Trans-humans is what we should be talking about, because homo sapiens would be the equivalent of neanderthals by the year 4000, comparitively.

Yet another alternative: the Euro and Yuan will merge and become the dominating world currency. At least until currency no longer has any meaning and we return to a system of barter - i make food, you make a foodholder because the hungry of the world will revolt and the world economic powers will be unable to respond.

We will slowly lose the ability to walk in 150 years this will be because electronics will be the only way communication and also because of cars, planes, ect.

Rubbish. People still walk for recreation. That won't change.

By 2030 worldwide production of battery electric vehicles will exceed production of vehicles powered by internal combustion engines.

The battery electric vehicle (BEV) has been promised to us for decades. The BEV received a lot of hype during the oil shocks of the 1970s and again during the 1990s when engine emissions reached public awareness. But it has failed to materialise again and again.

So what happened? Back then, the time for the BEV wasn't right yet. Historically, drawbacks such as high costs, limited travel distance between battery recharging, charging time, and battery lifespan, have prevented large-scale adoption.

But those drawbacks have now been virtually solved by ongoing battery research. I believe that now the time is finally right.

While the environmental advantages of the BEV, such as higher overall efficiency (including transmission losses) and zero emissions in cities will certainly help to promote it, in the end simple economics will decide its success.

Already today, in 2007, BEVs are cheaper to run than internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV), and the newest BEVs match (and sometimes exceed) ICEVs in terms of performance and range. While oil will not run out any time soon, huge demand from China and India means we are likely to never again experience the low petrol prices of the 1980s and 1990s. The per-kilometer energy cost of BEVs is about 1/5 of ICEVs. Finally, BEVs are likely to be cheaper to manufacture and maintain, since they are less complex than ICEVs and have fewer moving parts.

Those cost advantages are not going to go unnoticed by costumers, once this type of vehicle enters mass production.

Starting from 2010, the first bulk-produced BEVs will appear on the market (with models such the Mitsubishi Colt), and market share will grow rapidly until becoming the dominant type of vehicle in 2030.

Note: Fuel-cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) are a dead end technology in my opinion. Batteries are a mature technology and commercially viable fuel cells are still 20 years away. By that time, the BEV will have long won and there will be little incentive to keep investing in FCEV research. Also, the huge infrastructure investments required to store and distribute hydrogen will prevent its large scale take-up.

By 2027 there will be some radical innovations in the area of world’s economics theories which are hard to foresee today. These innovations, coupled with increased productivity in sectors essential to humankind, will significantly influence the way people think about the economic world today. The instrument to measure significant influence can be drawn up today; although the instrument itself may also undergo lot of change over this period.

1) Religion
2) Race
3) Nation

I don't quite know when, but eventually, if the human species survives for long enough, I am rather confident that these three notions will be history in due course. Any comments? On the timescale? On the statement itself?

Is LongBets still present today? The fact, that new predictions don't get processed and the "Improve Long Bets" group is full of spam indicates to me that prediction 137 actually might have become true.

We are still here. We are workingon the back end now to make improvements.

A revolt in China's Western cities will break out after the completion of the Olympic Games.It will spread to the capital when speculators and developers find that most of the developed office space in Beijing remains vacant and workers promised new projects will go unanswered.Inflation and staple prices will rise sharply followed by rotating student unrest in major cities caused by lack of jobs and nepotism and corruption in the granting of living permits that allow migrant workers/students to move about the country.I also predict at the same time we will see an increase in the amount of refugees fleeing North Korea as severe drought ravages it and parts of China.

50% of all media (film, video, still photos, and audio) of the 20th and early 21st century will be irretrievable and lost by the year 2100. We are now converting all media (good and bad) over to digital formats with the idea that digital media has greater archival value than analog. This is the great fallacy of the digital age. Analog media archival value relies on the purely the existence of the media it is stored on. Film, photos, negatives, recorders and other forms of analog recording will not degrade with out the record player, projector or other view devices.

Digital media on the other hand relies on two parts the coded information and the decoder. Loss of either makes the media irretrievable. Every year there are new formats and methods of encoding digital information coming on the market. These formats all have their codecs and decoders (DVD, and DVD players for example) and content is converted and produced it these formats. As long as there are players (decoders) and the storage medium stays intact the content is available. But, with every new format the content must be transcoded to the new format or as the format dies so does the content. Thus, the only thing that insures that digital content will survive for the long term is… COPYING!

The very thing that content producers are desperately trying to prevent people from doing is the only thing that will insure the long term availability of the content. Ironic, is it not? So as content producers will be the only people who can legally protect their content, its existence is entirely in there hands. As the market for a single piece of content dwindles over time it will not pay to transcode (copy) the material to next big format. And as copyright holders die and no one will be able to copy the material till the content goes into public domain. Most of the 20th century will be gone.

The only hope will for a lot of this material will be piracy. (I am not advocating this it is just true) Those things that are pirated will survive. Sad, but potentially true.

This is not a question of analog or digital but between a human or machine readable format. You will not be able to play an (analog) record if knowledge about record players is lost - yet the problem increases with complexity of storage solutions, of course.

The piracy argument will go away since copyright protection will eventually go away (I will have to make a prediction on this), since finally it is not in the interest of the copyright holders themselves, they just haven't understood that: It's better to have a share of a big market than 100% of no market at all.
The next generation of media managers, who will have grown up with the internet, will understand that and change their policies.

I predict (well, about 75%) that within 42 years (by 02050) we will have developed a quantitative measurement for memory, intelligence, and general brainpower.

The problem is one of language. A analog record is recorded using the basic language of physics. So even if the record player is lost it is not to hard to figure out how to reproduce the message. Egyptian Hieroglyphs are human readable yet we needed the Rosetta Stone to decode them. Why? they were encoded in a human language with symbols with a cultural base.

Most digital media is being encoded into forms that are designed to fit the computer and network environment and culture of the time. Without a binary Rosetta stone how will the data be decoded?

tooch

We here at Long Bets have been impressed with a new offering in the on line prediction area... Predictify.

After speaking with them, they were generous enough to set up a partner area for us here:
http://longnow.predictify.com

Its a great place to make shorter term predictions and or put a bounty on answers about your prediction. They have an excellent and simple interface worth checking out.

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