scav comments on New Year's Predictions Thread (2011) - Less Wrong

10 Post author: Kevin 02 January 2011 09:58AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (224)
Tags: predictions

Comments (224)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: scav 05 January 2011 01:11:12PM *  0 points [-]

Oil price will go over $100/barrel at some time this year: 80% World oil production (crude+condensate) will not exceed 2008 levels in any month of this year: 95%

No human-level (Turing-test passing) AGI this year: 99.5%

Kim Jong Il steps down or dies this year: 60%

Some physical phenomenon will be observed in the next 10 years that points physicists in a more fruitful direction than string theory: 50% (This last is pessimistic, because from the point of view of experimental falsifiability, practically ANYTHING would be better than string theory. I'm just positing that it may take 10 years for that anything to show up).

Comment author: gwern 10 January 2011 11:13:37PM *  0 points [-]
  1. Oil over $100/bbl: http://predictionbook.com/predictions/2122
  2. World oil production sounds like it would be a real pain to verify, so unless you have a specific data source in mind, I think I'm going to omit it - I certainly don't want to spend hours googling and ad-hoc educating myself about world oil production until I can make a guess at how to judge the prediction.
  3. AGI seems like a dupe of http://predictionbook.com/predictions/2092
  4. Kim: http://predictionbook.com/predictions/2123
  5. Physics: omitting because don't know how one would judge it.

EDIT: oil has already been closed as correct. I was probably underconfident there - oil has such volatility in recent years one should expect it to go over $100/bbl even with quasi-efficient markets in mind.

Comment author: scav 11 January 2011 09:04:39AM *  0 points [-]

Thanks

2 - I've put up a more precise prediction http://predictionbook.com/predictions/2134

5 - I've put up a more precise prediction asserting a Nobel prize win for a non-string unification theory by end of 2020.

Comment author: gwern 11 January 2011 05:00:51PM 5 points [-]

5 - http://predictionbook.com/predictions/2135

No offense, but I think you are dramatically, shockingly, overconfident here at 50%. Have you ever looked at the time lag for Nobel Prizes? The lags tend to start at a few decades. Look at the recent Prize for fiber optics - that work was done, like, 50 years ago.

So, you expect a new theory to be created and worked out in all its details, get experimental support, go through the usual Kuhnian progress, and be ratified by a Nobel Prize in 10 years?

Comment author: scav 12 January 2011 01:16:07PM 1 point [-]

Wow yeah; good catch. You are of course right about the time lag, which I hadn't researched when I pulled that guess out of my arse. I think I'll retract this prediction.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit