People on Manifold and in related communities tend to have much shorter technology timelines than the mainstream. We debate whether general artificial intelligence is coming in 5 years or 50, while normal people are saying things like "will we ever get out of our solar system before the sun dies in 5 billion years? Eh, maybe." I've seen completely serious predictions that certain techologies are possible but will not be developed for thousands or even millions of years.
If, after the year 2100, some significant new breakthrough is found, this market resolves to YES. If that hasn't happened by 2150, and scientists and inventors have arrived at a consensus that we've already discovered all the technology and there isn't anything new to invent, this resolves to NO. If they don't have such a consensus by 2150, this market remains open until they do.
In order to count, the invention must actually be built; a blueprint and high confidence that it would work is not good enough. However I will make allowances for things that just couldn't physically be built in that time frame. (e.g. a galactic-scale particle accelerator would be limited by the speed of light to not being built for ~50,000 years, but that limitation doesn't mean that we haven't yet invented the technology. Same for a dyson sphere that's being slowly constructed over the course of hundreds of years due to having to shuffle material back and forth across the solar system.)
Related questions
-
In the below market, I added a year 2150 expiration date for the purpose of benchmarking such questions as this. https://manifold.markets/HarrisonNathan/what-is-manifolds-yield-curve?r=SGFycmlzb25OYXRoYW4
This is silly. If there is civilization after 2100, there will continue to be technological advancements. You can "invent" a Dyson sphere with a planet sized ball of computronium and then take 200 years to build it, but I guarantee the millionth Dyson sphere will be completely different than the first one and incorporate lots of new inventions based on experience with the actual implementation of the idea. Maybe technology will "run out" at some point but it won't be anywhere close to 2100, no matter what the AGI situation looks like.
If someone invents a new form of knitting or similar does that count as a invention for this question? I have a suspicion we will keep some avenues unexplored for fun-theoretic reasons though I think I might be on the more anarchic end of what I would count as an invention (like some neat origami).
@Tassilo Nah, has to be something that's actually demonstrating a new capability in some interesting way.
What if we already have a basic blueprint for how to take over the universe, but we are still polishing the design, because some parts of the design process are fundamentally time/compute bottle necked? (like maybe making the design super minimal is worth the wait-time?)
@Tassilo Hmm. If all the interesting details are already known and the only bottleneck is some incredibly computationally intensive calculation that will take 100 years to complete, I won't count that as a new innovation; all the clever work was already done, and performing the calculation is similar to something like shuttling mass back and forth across the galaxy.
To get a sense of what qualifies as a "significant new breakthrough", which of the following inventions / developments would you say count as significant? (I've tried to order these from "big" to "small".)
the development of the internet as a whole
the development of email as a whole
the development of the internet as something most people (at least in rich and middle-income countries) can access
the development of online banking
the development of online signature platforms (e.g. Docusign) that let you sign legally binding contracts online
the development of ad-blocking browser addons (e.g. AdBlock)
the development of online grading platforms (e.g. Gradescope) that let you grade exams online
an update to Gradescope that lets it upload the grades automatically to the school's grading system
@Boklam 1, certainly. Maybe 2 and 3? Maaaaaybe 4? Not the rest. I don't really want to count new software as an invention, since there's a massive variety of software that could be created, and it just takes time and effort to make it a reality. A lot of software seems more like a creative endeavor than it does a new invention. Like writing a novel. (I might count something that seems fundamentally different, like blockchain or Shor's algorithm.)
