bentarm comments on New Year's Predictions Thread (2011) - Less Wrong
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General AI will not be made in 2011. Confidence: 90%.
The removal of DADT by the US military will result in fewer than 300 soldiers leaving the military in protest. (Note that this may be hard to measure.) Confidence: 95%.
The Riemann Hypothesis will not be proven. Confidence: 75%. (Minor note for the nitpickers: relevant foundational system is ZFC.)
Ryan Williams recent bound on ACC circuits of NEXP ((See here for a discussion of Williams work)) will be tightened in at least one of three ways: The result will be shown to apply for some smaller set of problems than NEXP, the result will be improved for some broader type of circuit than ACC, or the bound on the circuit size ruled out will be improved. Confidence: 60%
At least one head pastor of a Protestant megachurch in the US will be found to be engaging in homosexual activity. For purposes of this prediction "megachurch" means a church with regular attendance of 3000 people at Sunday services. Confidence: 70%.
Clashes between North Korea and South Korea will result in fatalities: Confidence 80%.
I'm definitely willing to put $300 to $100 on Riemann not being proved - even knowing that you may have some relevant insider knowledge.
I guess one issue is that we couldn't expect to know for sure by this time next year if it had been proved or not - I'd be willing to go with something like "by January 1 2012, no preprint will exist of an essentially correct proof of the Riemann Hypothesis (in ZFC)".
Yeah, multiple people have called me out on RH, and thinking about it more, I'm probably was just being way too underconfident.