From: Hal Finney (hal@finney.org)
Date: Mon Mar 25 2002 - 13:02:05 MST
The Long Bets Foundation, at http://www.longbets.org/, is "a public
arena for enjoyably competitive predictions, of interest to society, with
philanthropic money at stake." Bets are between two people, at even odds,
with at least $1000 at stake, with the outcome two or more years in the
future. You have to put the money in up front, however the winner doesn't
get it - it goes to the charity of his choice. (Actually the Foundation
invests it and then keeps half of the appreciated amount for itself.)
The subject is supposed to be important to society or science. Bettors
are also required to write an essay explaining why they think their
prediction will come true. Then there is a discussion board based
on the essays. I get the impression that the bets are the marquee
attraction but that the real point of the site will be the discussions
(which start in April).
The Long Bets Foundation is a spin-off from The Long Now Foundation,
which was created by ex-Thinking Machines head Danny Hillis to get people
thinking in the long term. The most famous project of Long Now is The
Clock of the Long Now, a clock which is supposed to last for 10,000 years,
a long as you remember to wind it.
Some of the bets: Ray Kurzweill bet Mitchell Kapor $20,000 that a computer
will pass the Turing Test by 2029. Esther Dyson bet Bill Campbell
$10,000 that the NY Times and WSJ will have referred to Russia as "the
software development capital of the world" by 2012. Danny Hillis bet
Nathan Myhrvold $2,000 that the universe will eventually stop expanding.
Lots of famous names here as you can see.
Needless to say, very few of the bets anticipate the kind of technological
changes which we foresee in the next several decades. The rich people
making these bets tend to rely on relatively linear extrapolations.
The whole idea behind these "Long" foundations is IMO fundamentally a
static view of human nature and its potentialities. But don't get me
started on that damned Clock.
And unlike Robin Hanson's Idea Futures, you don't get much information
about the likelihood of the outcomes just from the fact that two people
were willing to make a bet at even odds. It would be nice if the Long
Bets people were willing to run an ancillary IF market on each of their
claims so that people could bet on which side would win. Then you might
get something useful out of them.
Hal
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