[ExI] My prediction

Sat Jan 3 14:55:36 UTC 2026

From: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> 
Subject: Re: [ExI] My prediction

On Sat, Jan 3, 2026 at 7:38 AM <spike at rainier66.com <mailto:spike at rainier66.com> > wrote:

>>… the idea has been mainstream.  No one knows how to make it happen

>…Well somebody had better figure out a way to make UBI happen and do so mighty damn quick if they don't want a horrific bloody revolution on their hands ….

OK so think of a way to word a wager which is devoid of subjective terms, ideally something which has numbers in it such as is done on the meme betting site PredictIt.  Numbers (as measured by a disinterested site such as RCP is good.  I would bet against a horrific bloody revolution if we derive some kind of objective metric to determine if a horrific bloody revolution is occurring or has occurred.  I would pay about 90 RespectCoin cents for the meme no bloody revolution and no UBI in 2026, which pays one RC dollar if both of those conditions are met.  Before we can proceed, we need an objective metric on bloody revolution however.

> you could reword your bets to something like this: Congress will pass a bill providing UBI to all US citizens but POTUS will veto it in 2026

>…That won't work. Congress will never pass such a bill …

John K Clark

OK, counter-propose something which will work.  Word it in such a way that we can make bets on it with play money, RCs.  Sounds like you are betting against UBI going mainstream, or it already is mainstream, depending on how one defines the term mainstream.  

The notion of defining predictions using only a defined set of objective metrics is something we learned back when our own ExI guy Professor Robin Hanson proposed the notion of Ideas Futures back in the mid 1990s.  Oh we loved that game.  The play money version was so much fun.

spike

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