If we all die, this resolves YES. If AGI happens at least before 2040 (gives at least 10 years to use AGI to cure cancer), this very likely resolves YES. Metaculus thinks AGI pre 2040 is 73% likely.

@Nikola Buying only at 25% instead of ~60% because I think it's pretty likely that, even if we cure cancer and aging, there will be some percentage of people who choose to die of cancer because of religious or similar reasons.

@Nikola It’s also contingent on how far the recursive self improvement process goes and what is physically possible to do towards curing cancer. It’s not just one disease, but every possible way cells can evolve towards reproducing too much.

@Nikola And, given there are roughly 0.5M cancer deaths per year in the US, this only requires 1 in 500 people to choose to die from cancer for this to resolve NO. So this market is not only capturing progress in medicine, but also people's beliefs regarding death being bad and wanting to die from cancer

@Nikola But I think pro-cancer biological people will be extremely rare in 2050. I think it's less than 20% likely that there's more than 1 in 500 such people in the US in 2050.

@Nikola God, you're absolutely right that that's a big risk, but if you're going to die from something, why opt into it being cancer? Just drown yourself- awful but it beats goddam cancer. Christ.

@Frogswap I could see there being groups of people who are generally anti-medicine or anti-post-agi-tech, and thus refuse any kind of advanced medical treatment in the future. It's not that they would be pro cancer in particular, it's that they would just let nature take its course and kill them "however it wishes", and cancer is one of the most likely way to go.

@Nikola No, no, you're right. I'm just pissed about it 🙂

@Nikola Are insular fertile groups like Amish currently under 1/500 of the US? What will they be in 2050 at current relative growth rates? What will change the relative growth rates?

@JonathanRay I expect both (1) religiousness and (2) tech-abstinent lifestyles to drop in the next 3 decades (in absolute number), the second more than the first. Mostly from people leaving tech-abstinent communities in light of huge quality of life improvements from tech.

@JonathanRay I just exited because of these theoretical self-hating pricks. Let me know if you make a market that better captures "Will we have a generally available cure for cancer by 2050".

I'd also be interested in a market that captures this more than religious/ideological cruxes in the US population!

@Nikola I expect Amish apostasy rates decrease over time due to evaporative cooling. The ones most likely to do that have already left and the tendency to do that decreases genetically with each generation (and the higher the defection rate the stronger this selection process). Benefits on the outside may not be reliably observable from the inside.

@JonathanRay I agreed with this at first, but I was thinking about it and there is a case for apostasy rates to increase over time. Today, Amish people decide between 2023 technology and their current lifestyle. If technology substantially advances, the choice will become substantially more difficult. Given that technology is presently exponential, it could overpower the more gradual evolutionary selection (which will only be ~1 more generation by 2050 anyway).

edit: Though I guess, on the other hand, technology could grow more intimidating. I think we're at the limit for how much technological intimidation humans can cope with, but I could be wrong.