One reason I've had such fun reading the customer-service-horror-story blog Not Always Right is that it provides scads of anecdotal evidence that otherwise bright and competent people, when put in a situation where they feel they have high status (e.g. as a paying customer dealing with an employee), are suddenly quite apt to fail noticing the obvious, refuse to process information given them repeatedly, or read an entire situation confidently wrong.

We've had this discussion before here: Neanderthals were, in all likelihood, smarter than Homo sapiens, had a higher average brain size, and coexisted with humans, yet still went extinct. I believe the prevailing theory is that humans were more social and reproduced faster, which outweighed the intelligence gap at the time.

For an analogy, think about the Psilons in Master of Orion 2: they're very intelligent, but are weak early in the game. Given enough time, they'll have much better technology than everyone else, but they have to live that long first.

Also, it's generally accepted that it's the brain mass ratio that matters (for some reason), not the absolute brain size. Presumably this has something to do with how a higher body mass means a higher "computational load" on the brain, so to get more intelligence, you need higher brain mass per unit body mass.

What strikes me about our current situation is not only are we at an extremely influential point in the history of the universe, but how few people realize this. It ought to give the few people in the know enormous power (relative to just about anyone else who has existed or will exist) to affect the future, but, even among those who do realize that we're at a bottleneck, few try to shape the future in any substantial way, to nudge it one way or another. Instead, they just go about their "normal" lives, and continue to spend their money on the standard status symbols and consumer goods.

What to make of this? If we follow straight revealed preference, we have to conclude that people have huge discount rates on distance or time, or to put it more straightforwardly, they are simply indifferent about what happens in nearly all of the universe. This is not a very palatable conclusion for those who lean towards preference utilitarianism. Robin's response (in "Dream Time") is to dismiss those preferences as "consequential delusions" and Eliezer's response (in CEV) is to hope that if people were more intelligent and rational they would have more interesting preferences.

Personally, I don't know what I want the future to be, but I still find it worthwhile to try to push it in certain directions, directions that I think are likely to be net improvements. And I also puzzle over why I appear to be in such an atypical position.

The probability is 1/5 (as independently calculated by me). I've no idea if argument 2 is correct, because I don't understand it. My reasoning:

There are 6 combinations of 2 cards: AsAh, As2c, As2d, Ah2c, Ah2d, 2c2d.

Of these, only the first 3 (AsAh, As2c, As2d) could I have answered yes to both questions (assuming I'm not lying, wihch is outside the context).

But if I have AsAh, only 1/2 the time would I have answered yes to the second question. So AsAh needs 1/2 the weight of the other 2 possibilities.

So the probability is (1/2)/(2+1/2) = 1/5.

I'm predicting that in 2020 you'll look back at this blog comment and say, "Wow, he sure called that one."

Right. TNT does not count as a mobile energy storage system.

I think you're wrong; but it's a really interesting prediction.

The reason I think you're wrong is that the rate of improvement of technologies in a field is more-or-less fixed within a field, because it depends on the economics, not on the science. Moore's Law exists not because there's some magic about semiconductors, but because the market is sized and structured such that you need to sell people a new system every 2 years, and you need to double performance to get people to buy a new system.

This means you can look at the past exponential curve for battery density, and project it into the future with some confidence. I don't know what the exponent per year is; but my gut feeling before checking any data or doing any calculations is that it isn't high enough.

My second prediction is that the largest area of impact from technological change over the next decade will come from increasing communications bandwidth. Supercomputers a hundred times more powerful than those that exist today don't look revolutionary, while ubiquitous ultra-cheap wireless broadband makes storage and processing power less important. Improvements in small scale energy storage, tech transfer from e-paper and lower power computer chips will probably help make portable personal computers more energy efficient, but for always-on augmented reality (and its sister-tech robotics) in areas with ubiquitous broadband computing off-site is the way to go.

On a AR theme I think there will be a high level language created within ten years for AR that will try to make the following accessible

• Pulling info off the Internet
• Machine vision
• Precise overlay rendering

People will want to mash up different AR services in one "view" so you don't have to switch between them. There needs to be a lingua franca and HTML doesn't seem suited. I'd think it likely that it will be some XML variant.

China is the 2nd biggest economy in 2020 (99%). Note I'm counting the EU as lots of countries, not as one big economy. Counting the EU together, China will be the 3rd biggest.

Pirate Parties will have been in government for a time in at least one country by 2020 (90%)

Pirate Parties will win >=10 seats in the European parliament in 2014 (75%), and <=30 seats (75%).

The Conservatives will win a majority the next UK general election (60%), there will be no overal majority (37%), or any other outcome (3%).

Next Year

• Holiday retail sales will be below consensus forecasts leading to some market turmoil in the early part of the year as the 'recovery' starts to look shaky (70%).
• A developed country will suffer a currency crisis - most likely either the UK, US or one of the weaker Eurozone economies (60%).
• A new round of bank failures and financial turmoil as the wave of Option ARM mortgage resets starts to hit and commercial real estate collapses including at least one major bank failure (a 'too big to fail' bank) (75%).
• A major terrorist attack in the US (50%) most likely with a connection to Pakistan. The response will be disproportionate to the magnitude of the attack (99%).
• Apple will launch a tablet and will aim to do for print media what it has done for music (80%).
• Democrats will lose seats in Congress and the Senate in the elections but Republicans will not gain control of either house (70%).
• One or more developed countries will see significant civil unrest due to ongoing problems with the economy (50%).

Next Decade

• US will undergo a severe currency crisis (more likely) or sovereign default (less likely) (75%).
• Developed countries' welfare states will begin to collapse (state retirement and unemployment benefits and health care will be severely curtailed or eliminated in more than one developed country) (75%).
• UK will undergo a severe currency crisis or sovereign default (90%).
• One or more countries will drop out of the Euro or the entire system will collapse (75%).
• A US state will secede (30%).