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![[The future's at stake]](03lead.gif)
Daniel Rosario
By 2020, bioterror will lead to one million casualties in a single event.
By 2029, a machine will pass the Turing test.
By 2050, we will receive intelligent signals from outside our solar system. And by 2100 a world government will be in place and in control of weapons of mass destruction.
At least that's what Martin Rees, Ray Kurzweil, Paul Hawken and Colin R Glassey have bet between $2,000 and $20,000 on.
They are certainly not empty-headed gamblers groping in the dark: Rees is an astronomer and professor at Princeton University; Kurzweil is a legendary author, entrepreneur and technologist; Hawken is founder, Smith & Hawken and author of The Ecology of Commerce; and Glassey is an amateur historian and professional computer programmer.
They've all placed their wagers on Long Bets, a site founded by Kevin Kelly and Steward Brand. In its attempt to improve "long-term" thinking, the San Francisco-based Long Bets Foundation encourages "competitive predictions, of interest to society, with philanthropic money at stake."
When a wager is struck, the claimant stakes a tax-deductible sum of at least $ 1,000. So does the taker. Both parties name charities of their choice to receive the winnings at the culmination. As the minimum period for the conclusion of a wager is two years, the money is invested in the Farsight Fund, a special-purpose endowment portfolio. Long Bets claims half of the interest as service maintenance charges, while the remaining becomes part of the final amount donated to charity.
Each bettor makes an argument explaining his theory and the importance of the subject chosen. The Internet makes these arguments available to its users around the world. Bets are structured in a way that ensures a winner and a loser, and the Web site will be a discussion forum after the termination of each bet. Recording such wagers on the Net ensures public credit for winning a Long Bet.
Stewart Brand, co-founder, Long Bets Foundation, says they have received around 25 predictions so far, about 10 of which have gone on record. "We're still in pre-release, so it's somewhat amazing to have so much activity so far," says Brand.
The high stakes might discourage many potential bettors. Despite that, not all who do bet find their wagers accepted. "Bets have to be 'societally or scientifically important.' They also have to make sense," says, Brand, adding that some proposed bets don't. Their staff mediator screens proposed bets, based on certain guidelines. "Everyone at Long Bets is involved in the thinking. Kevin Kelly and I have overall responsibility and authority," says Brand.
To that extent, he feels the most exciting wager currently on is that at least one human born in the year 2000 will still be alive in 2150. "That bet by Peter Schwartz now has a taker. It's exciting to me because it's long, it's about quite an important matter (human life extension), and makes us look at the present differently. Which children or infants among us now might live that long?"
Brand suggests that the combination of public accountability and public discussion of the predictions may be instrumental in improving long-term thinking. He thinks the mandatory two-year minimum period is short rather than long, and will help everyone interested in Long Bets to see how concluding a bet actually works, and have the "full-cycle experience sooner rather than later." However, the shortest duration of present wagers is around 5 years.
In the case of an ambiguous outcome, he states that the selection of an arbitration panel and watching their deliberation will be "part of the fun of concluding a Long Bet."
Most bets on the site are placed by people of some standing in society. But Brand insists that the facility to make predictions is open to everyone: "We would love to see bets from India, for example. In fact, there could be a whole category of bets of interest primarily to Indians. 'Societally important' doesn't have to be global -- it could be of interest just to one city."
About his personal prediction for Long Bets, Brand says, "I would bet that it will flourish." Being a Long Bets board member prevents him from actually placing such a bet on the Web site but he hints, "anyone else can".
Another site allows you to 'Bet your reputation on the future,' though just for fun. At Foresight Exchange, there's no real money at stake - just FX-bucks. So you can predict the shape of future events with the ease at which you buy up whole places at Monopoly.
Membership is currently free. There are bets of long as well as short duration. As the site puts it, 'It combines the real-time interactive potential of the World Wide Web with a game of predictive skill.'
"The goal is to see how well an Idea Futures market can work in practice," says Ken Kittlitz, administrator of Foresight Exchange, "If the market is accurate, the predictions allow us to assess what future events are more likely than others; in other words, the market helps us predict the future."
And since Kittlitz claims that the market is right about 70 per cent of the time, there could be some useful indicators here.
In the light of recent events, he's keeping a close eye on a claim that a nuclear weapon will be used somewhere in the world by New Year's Day 2010. A rather serious claim. Klittlitz admits, "Many people play just for fun, but others take the market very seriously and in some cases, base real-life decisions on what the market is telling them."
The betting process appears complicated - resembling the mayhem of a stock market rather than a simple roll of the dice -- and could take some getting used to, but this tutorial may simplify things. Once you register, an account is created, and you can use your FX-bucks to buy coupons on claims of your choice. The number of coupons you buy should be proportionate to how sure you are of the claim becoming a reality. Alternatively, you can also sell your coupons if you feel it won't come true.
Each users trading gives him a score that reflects his ability at making good predictions. A beginner's default score is 1.000, after which it moves higher for every bet won and lower with losses.
Odds on each claim are the product of cumulative betting. The site says, 'as a member of the Foresight Exchange you are contributing your knowledge to the market consensus.'
The site has a screening process for claims. Those that are vague, ambiguous or over-specified are rejected. Read these guidelines before making your first claim. According to Ken Kittlitz, "the player who proposes a claim must find another player who is willing to act as judge on it. A new claim stays in "proposed" state for at least seven days so that players can suggest wording changes." Claims are settled when their due date arrives, or when the judge deems that a claim can definitely be settled one way or the other. As the judge's decision is final, each judge is encouraged to post his interpretations of how a claim will be judged.
If you choose not to stake a claim, you could just bet on those that are already on. Some of them predict the crash of Amazon this year and the death of Apple Computer by 2005.
There's even someone who foretells that Osama Bin Laden will still be running free on October 1, 2002, one year after the start of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Definitely one prediction many hope will go wrong!
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