

Future Timeline - drKarl
http://www.futuretimeline.net/

======
mnemonicsloth
Psych research is starting to suggest that the organization of the human brain
makes it especially bad at predicting the future. That is, we make more
mistakes building timelines like this than can be explained by a simple lack
of information. You could call it the Eloi-Morlock bias:

 _Regarding distant futures, however, we’ll be too confident, focus too much
on unlikely global events, rely too much on trends, theories, and loose
abstractions, while neglecting details and variation. We’ll assume the main
events take place far away (e.g., space), and uniformly across large regions.
We’ll focus on untrustworthy consistently-behaving globally-organized social-
others. And we’ll neglect feasibility, taking chances to achieve core grand
symbolic values, rather than ordinary muddled values. Sound familiar?

More bluntly, we seem primed to confidently see history as an inevitable march
toward a theory-predicted global conflict with an alien united them determined
to oppose our core symbolic values, making infeasible overly-risky
overconfident plans to oppose them. We seem primed to neglect the value and
prospect of trillions of quirky future creatures not fundamentally that
different from us, focused on their simple day-to-day pleasures, mostly
getting along peacefully in vastly-varied uncoordinated and hard-to-predict
local cultures and life-styles. _

The original paper in _Science_ :
<http://www.sciencemag.org/content/322/5905/1201.full.pdf>

The quote is from here, with more explanation:
<http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/11/abstractdistant.html>

And here's more on the implications for evolutionary game theory:
[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/a-tale-of-two-
tradeoff...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/a-tale-of-two-
tradeoffs.html)

The last two are great reads, with one caveat. The author specializes in
asking uncomfortable questions, so it's best to take them as a challenge to
your sense of open-mindedness. If you find yourself getting angry or thinking
"this can't possibly be true," you might want to think about it some more.

~~~
Maro
In case someone doesn't know, Eloi and Morlock are two races descended from
man in H.G. Wells' classic 1895 novel 'The Time Machine'.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine>

PS: Stephen Baxter has a new sequel novel based TTT called 'The Time Ships', I
just started reading it, it's great!

------
ck2
_diverging paths for humans and transhumans_

lol, try replacing _humans_ with _middle-class_ and _transhumans_ with _ultra-
wealthy_

sometime in the 22nd century the USA will pass the 10 percent mark for it's
population in jail/prison as government prisons are defunded, private-prisons
become even more profitable as inmates are forced to pay for their
incarceration with labor for pennies per hour, and lawmakers are paid by
prison-industry lobbyists to make more offenders - the supreme court rules
that judges may own stock in prisons, etc. - TSA will be allowed to collect
DNA samples during random roadblocks, etc.

 _Humanity spreads throughout the local stellar neighbourhood, as Earth is
restored to its former beauty_

Wouldn't a better name for this site have been "future fantasy" ?

I mean I love the ideas but it's complete fantasy. The earth is going to be a
pile of people trying to climb over each other economically, only to feed the
ultra-weathly on top. Law-enforcement is going to be a multi-trillion dollar a
year industry because it will be the only way to keep the masses at their jobs
and not protesting.

~~~
rmc
A prediction like that based on current social fears as as accurate as the
prediction that by 2000 the world would be destroyed by The (nucelar) Bomb

~~~
arethuza
Given how close we came to all our nuclear war on at least two occasions I
don't think that was necessarily a bad prediction.

Edit: the two occasions:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis>

~~~
TillE
Indeed. Nuclear proliferation is an increasing problem, and while we now lack
the superpower standoff where a war could destroy most of humanity, many
states are now capable of blowing up a large chunk of the world.

It's probably only a matter of time.

------
lars
I love this kind of thing, and I'm going to disagree with this one:

2016, Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) replaces Blu-Ray

This isn't going to happen. In fact Blu-Ray will never even replace the DVD.
DVDs will be replaced by digital downloads and streaming. Consumers are driven
by convenience, and the most convenient way to move bits to your home is not
via a disc.

In 2000, Super Audio CD was in a format war with DVD-audio. Who won? The MP3
did. It completely baffles me that the movie industry goes ahead to repeat
history with HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray. Neither of them will win.

~~~
ac2u
But Blu-ray did win.

I understand your point, however, I'm sure the introduction of Blu-ray HD-DVD
made sense from a business standpoint for the entertainment industry, it will
take a while before bandwidth/storage makes them irrelevant on a worldwide
basis. So while HVDs might be made irrelevant before they even reach the
public on a wide scale, I doubt you can say the same for Blu-ray.

~~~
generalk

      > But Blu-ray did win.
    

For interesting values of "win." It's the format that's being distributed (as
opposed to HD-DVD), but DVDs are still the more common format. (No statistics,
just comparisons of DVD and Blu-ray sections at local retailers. DVD's always
bigger.)

Meanwhile, the only people I know who've bought _any_ Blu-ray discs are those
who own a PS3 and essentially got the player for free with the game console
they were buying.

~~~
ac2u
Sure, I agree with you. (When I say win, I was referring to HD-DVD vs Blu-
ray). But what I'm saying is that it's too early to call Blu-ray a failure. It
may well serve it's purpose quite well before streaming HD video inevitably
becomes ubiquitous throughout the world.

I think the difference of opinion here is that some posters are evaluating
Blu-ray against DVD, whereas I'm mainly viewing it as a transition format
until bandwidth catches up, rather than the jump which was VHS->DVD.

------
othello
For those who did not get the xkcd reference either:

<http://xkcd.com/887/>

------
tlb
The environment has been steadily improving for the last 40 years. Less
vehicle pollution, less industrial pollution, more conscientious consumers.
Why not extrapolate in that direction?

~~~
hugh3
Extrapolate in any old direction you like, it's equally likely to be true.

------
fistofjohnwayne
> 2013 - Iran carries out its first nuclear test

Then...

> This nuclear test is viewed in the West as the most significant world event
> since 9/11

Yet this is the last time in the 21st century that Iran is mentioned.

------
nazgulnarsil
I suggest everyone move to the hi quality stuff and start reading some Greg
Egan, Vernor Vinge, or Charles Stross rather than this piddle.

------
TheloniusPhunk
EDIT: I find it extremely ignorant that people believe conditions on earth
will significantly deteriorate in the next century. Earth has been around for
4.6 billion years. It's appealing to say that humans are destroying the Earth,
but it also incredibly arrogant. We have been a a flicker in the bigger
picture. Disease or weaponry will kill us long before climate change does.

That doesn't mean I don't enjoy this timeline!

~~~
zacharycohn
Timewise, we have been a flicker. But nothing else in Earth's history has
become industrialized like humans have in the past ~100 years.

You can't say that a handful of volcanoes and dinosaur farts 70 million years
ago is anything close to the CO2 we put out every day from 7 billion people,
billions of cars, millions of factories, etc etc.

~~~
TheloniusPhunk
Too be honest. I just don't know that industrial carbon emissions rival those
of a super-volcanoes or that of an apocalyptic asteroid slamming into Earth.
100 years isn't a lot of time to measure our affect on the grander scheme. Not
saying our recent environmental efforts are for naught, but I do believe that
when all is said and done and humans are extinct, our impact on Earth will
have been negligible.

------
gwern
If anyone cares, I imported a bunch of the futuretimeline.net predictions into
<http://predictionbook.com/> which lets you register your own probabilities
and tracks expirations:
[http://www.google.com/search?q=futuretimeline.net%20site%3Ap...](http://www.google.com/search?q=futuretimeline.net%20site%3Apredictionbook.com)

------
Typhon
I love how the emergence of human-like AI, something I wouldn't expect my
great-grandchildren to see, is placed _before_ the USA declining as a world
power, something which is happening since the beginning of the century and
will probably accelerate during the next decade (I mean the 2010s). Also, I
hope I won't have to wait 30 years to see the end of the EU.

~~~
weavejester
What don't you like about the EU?

~~~
Typhon
It's making my country poor, it allowed its industries to be outsourced, and
it is now robbing people from their sovereignty. It's not providing any kind
of protection against the outside world, but it is destroying all of its
members previous protection (such as tolls). I don't think it's the cause of
all the problems in Europe, but it certainly prevents its members from solving
them.

~~~
Sandman
We're definitely going off-topic here but I just have to ask: I heard that
there is a strong anti-EU sentiment in many member states precisely because
people feel the same way you do about EU. But obviously, EU worked out quite
well for the majority of citizens of those countries.

Why am I saying that? Well, it seems to me that if the majority was genuinely
dissatisfied with their country being a part of the union, they'd petition for
a referendum, the government would be obliged to hold the referendum if enough
people petitioned for it (certainly if the majority wanted it), then once the
referendum is held, the people would vote against staying in the union and
presto - they're no longer a member.

So why didn't something like this happen in any of the member countries? There
are countries trying desperately to get into the union, but I don't know of
any country that desparately wants to get out.

~~~
Typhon
Not yet at least. The dissatisfaction is growing, but it's not yet the opinion
of the majority. Unless there are drastic changes, it will be. The last treaty
(TCE and its ersatz), was rejected by all the referendums. None of the
countries who ratified them used referendum.

But it's a bit naïve to say that petitioning the government for a referendum
would oblige the government to hold it.

 _But obviously, EU worked out quite well for the majority of citizens of
those countries._

As a matter of fact, it's still working out well for the newcomers. But for
founding members, especially France, my country, it hasn't been the case for
the past twenty years.

------
fearraf
They clearly don't understand teleportation!

Real teleportation in the style of quantum controlled dynamics is the
transportation of the state of a particle. By definition it is impossible to
"transport" more than a single qubit.

------
markbnine
It would be nice if this were more web 2.0. With commenting, voting, and
collective stupidity, who knows what time lines would bubble up? The site
would also warrant a return visit.

------
nanexcool
There goes my morning. 15 minutes in and I'm barely at the 2020s.

~~~
nanexcool
Quick reply to myself, just finished reading the whole thing. So yeah, morning
gone.

~~~
zacharycohn
I avoided this problem by skimming the headlines then only reading 3 or 4
articles per section.

------
delinquentme
GO HUMANS.

