[extropy-chat] silent night

[Harvey Newstrom]

On Dec 22, 2004, at 4:56 PM, Brett Paatsch wrote:

> Yet of all the ideas that are circulating in transhumanist circles the 
> one that is the most interesting to me personally at present is 
> Robin's futures market idea.

Has anyone gotten any evidence that futures markets really can predict 
the future?  I keep hearing the Iowa markets referenced as predicting 
political elections, but I can't see it in their historical data.  
Everything I found seems to show bad results or regular flip-flopping 
to the point that they don't predict anything.  I would sure love to 
see real historical data showing predictions.  My experience with 
future prediction in general is that it is wrong more often than not.

> I think I am a skeptic and would be a naysayer to most of the main 
> transhumanist ideas. But I like the sort of people that will explore 
> ideas like cryonics, ai, radical life extension, molecular nanotech 
> rather than just dismiss those things out of hand because they seem 
> unlikely. And they do seem unlikely on first impression to people who 
> have experience in the development of technology and to people who 
> have life experience where they have seen how politics and systemic 
> problems can retard the rates of change.

I seem to be more of a believer in these things compared to the general 
population.  But I also seem to be more conservative than a lot of 
transhumanists.  I think a lot of transhumanists get so gung-ho for 
this stuff that they hype themselves into an unrealistic frenzy.  Many 
of our ideas will eventually happen.  But they are not happening today. 
  Even though new cancer cures get announced almost monthly, I don't 
expect cancer to be cured in a decade.  Even though we keep 
"completing" the human genome, we keep discovering more genes or more 
coding or more interpretations that expand our research beyond what we 
thought was already complete.  I don't expect human genetics to move 
from the realm of discovery to the realm of "well understood" science 
in a decade.  Space exploration is a joke right now compared to earlier 
plans that were scrapped and unfunded.  Robotics and AI are progressing 
ahead, but are still way behind earlier predictions.  Basically, I 
think most of our predictions are wrong.  We expect instant results too 
soon.  While this seems more accurate than the general public that 
expects the status quo to last forever, it still is a misleading 
position that leads to faulty conclusions and poor planning.  Look at 
all the dot-com information companies that failed because the big boom 
in a knowledge-based economy didn't turn out as big or as fast as we 
thought.

> I don't think the optimism apparently felt by many posters to 
> transhumanist lists is not well based to be honest. People like Jules 
> Verne and Da Vinci have been imagining what technology could do for a 
> long time. In every age it seems like people felt that they were on 
> the cusp of something like a singularity and in every age what slowed 
> the rate of progress was the mundane, non technological things.

This is the sad truth of human existence.  Even with Moore's so-called 
law and exponential progress, it never is going to be as fast as our 
imagination wishes.

> If the main thing stopping Robin's futures market ideas from being 
> implemented and providing a mechanism for analysts to pit their skills 
> against each other and to profit from the exchange is wowserish laws, 
> then what would that say about the state of the world? We'd be living 
> in a world where the best sort of free speech and the purest forms of 
> the free market are already effectively denied to individuals who want 
> to interact in ways that have no harmful bearing on others at all.

All those people who believe in this market stuff need to face the fact 
that current markets don't believe it will work.  Current investors 
aren't funding such a market.  Current companies aren't researching 
such a market.  The free-market forces are currently steering away from 
such a market.  Maybe the free-market is wrong or doesn't work.  But it 
certainly isn't pushing for future markets right now.  Only a few rare 
visionaries are pushing this idea.

> It can be hard to develop what seem to be good ideas into real 
> commercial opportunities. And Robins futures market idea is pretty 
> esoteric. The applications for it
> in science and technology prediction and acceleration are not likely 
> to be easily understood by legislators.

I am not sure it is understood by economists or scientists either.  
Someone needs to set up a working model that produces verifiable 
results.  Then people will pay attention.  Right now, the existing 
futures markets aren't making any well-publicized predictions that beat 
out other predictors.

> My gut tells me that once started in a for real money way the idea 
> will take off in a big way, but I don't completely trust my gut, and 
> if Robin and others feel the same way and find other things more 
> attractive or urgent to do with their time then it might not get 
> started at all

There must be a way to do this.  Surely we could start a corporation 
and pay people a low salary to research market ideas, and given them 
bonuses based on which research turns out to be right.  It doesn't have 
to follow the gambling or investment model to reward correct research 
and punish negative research.  I can't imagine that it is really 
illegal or impossible to do this.  My guess would be a lack of 
interest.  Not enough people would really buy into this to make it 
work.  The functionality of making it work or making it legal seems the 
least of the problems.

--
Harvey Newstrom <HarveyNewstrom.com>
CISSP, ISSAP, ISSMP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC