I think you're downplaying the chances that a singularity does happen in my lifetime. 90% of experts seem to think it will.
I don't. (Edit: I meant this as "I don't think I am downplaying the chances", not "I don't think the singularity will happen")
It's true that I disagree with your experts here, and Lumifer speaks to some of my reasons. I even disagree with the LW consensus which is much more conservative than the one you quote.
That said, even taking your predictions for granted, there are still two huge concerns with the singularity retirement plan:
Even given that it will occur in your/my lifetime, how do you know what it will look like and that it will lead to a retirement you are happy with even if you have no capital?
If there is even a 5-10% chance that it doesn't happen, or doesn't provide what you want -- that is a fail when I am doing a retirement plan for most of my clients. I'm generally aiming for a 0+epsilon or at least <1% chance of failure if the client is able to follow the plan[*]. The only clients where building in a 10% chance of bust is ok are those who are in a real pickle, and there is no reasonable strategy to do better. Those clients' plans have to include downward adjustment of their goals if the initial trajectory is in or too close to the failure window.
[*] obviously most of the true failure chance happens when the client is unable to follow the plan at some point. Financially, some of that can be insured against (health and disability, life for dependent survivors) and some can't.
I'm 22 years old, just got a job, and have the option of putting money in a 401k. More generally, I just started making money and need to think about how I'm going to invest and save it.
As far as long-term/retirement savings goes, the way I see it is that my goal is to ensure that I have a sufficient standard of living when I'm "old" (70-80). I see a few ways that this can happen:
Median optimistic year (10% likelihood): 2022
Median realistic year (50% likelihood): 2040
Median pessimistic year (90% likelihood): 2075
- http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-2.html
And even if they're wrong and there's no singularity, it still seems to be very likely that there will be immense wealth creation in the next 60 or so years, and I'm sure that there'll be a fair amount of distribution as well, such that the poorest people will probably have reasonably comfortable lives. I'm a believer in Kurweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, but even if you project linear growth, there'd still be immense growth.
Given all of this, I find thinking that "wealth creation + distribution over the next 60 years -> sufficient standard of living for everyone" is a rather likely scenario. But my logic here is very "outside view-y" - I don't "really understand" the component steps and their associated likelihoods, so my confidence is limited.
Anyway, I think that there is a pretty good chance that I succeed, in, say the next 20 years. I never thought hard enough about it to put a number on it, but I'll try it here.
Say that I get 10 tries to start a startup in the next 20 years (I know that some take longer than 2 years to fail, but 2 years is the average, and it often takes shorter than 2 years to fail). At a 50% chance of success, that's a >99.9% chance that at least one of them succeeds (1-.5^10). I know 50% might seem high, but I think that my rationality skills, domain knowledge (eventually) and experience (eventually) give me an edge. Even at a 10% chance of success, I have about a 65% (1-.9^10) chance at succeeding in one of those 10 tries, and I think that 10% chance of success is very conservative.
Things I may be underestimating: the chances that I judge something else (earning to give? AI research? less altruistic? a girl/family?) to be a better use of my time. Changes in the economy that make success a lot less likely.
Anyway, there seems to be a high likelihood that I continue to start startups until I succeed, and there seems to be a high likelihood that I will succeed by the time I retire, in which case I should have enough money to ensure that I have a sufficient standard of living for the rest of my life.