The Ten Year Thread

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Graham Kennedy
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The Ten Year Thread

Post by Graham Kennedy »

So here's an idea. What do you think the world will be like, ten years from now? What will have changed, what will be the same? Put your ideas here, and in ten years we can necro the thread and see how we did?

My thoughts :

1) Trump will win a second term.
2) Driverless cars will be on the roads in private hands, and becoming increasingly common. There will be considerable disruption because truck drivers, taxi drivers, etc will be starting to lose jobs at a high rate.
3) There will be more widespread use of alternative energy forms - wind, solar, etc. And more local generation - buildings with solar panels, etc. But most power will still be generated by fossil fuels.
4) Electric cars will be increasingly common - most driverless cars will be electric.
5) There will be no solution to the Israel/Palestinian issue. The Middle East will still be a place where wars and such go on.
6) The next ten years will see at least five of the warmest years since records began. Global Warming deniers will be in the process of shifting to "Well it is real, but it's too late to do anything about it."
7) There will be private companies flying tourists into space - but this will be very much brief novelty trips as a thing for the rich. There will be no space hotels, no mass spaceflight for ordinary people, no bases on the moon. Nor will there be any manned flight to Mars.
8) After initial problems, the UK will be doing reasonably well outside of the EU. Most people will wonder what the fuss was about.
9) Computers will continue to get faster and more powerful. A computer may come close to passing the Turing test. But there will be no genuine AI system.
10) China will not be a world military power. Indeed, it will be struggling economically and people will be remembering the time when everyone talked about it as an economic giant in the making and wondering why anybody thought that would happen.
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Re: The Ten Year Thread

Post by Teaos »

Your first 5 are pretty much a given.

* i see issues for Europe. A hard swing right, split of the EU, some sort of lowkey war that will be the nail in the coffin. Greece or Italy will try to leave, more migrants across boarder, rest of Europe says no. Russia does scary shit.

* In next 2 years we get another recession, not as bad as last one, but rights and aide get cut in US. Next big step towards massive social upheaval,

* Related to above, growing debt, growing wealth gap, growing hate from media, 2 election cycles from now the system breaks...

* we beat aging, find the switch that turns off imperfect copying. Immortality is possible, huge moral debate.

* Chine clones a human.
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Re: The Ten Year Thread

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I honestly see a hard time seeing Trump being re elected. Only his true supporters will vote for him again without question. There were alot of people who voted for Trump who did not want Hillary (like me, which is better losing a hand or your whole forearm?). I am like alot of people who feel they voted wrong.

But then again, our votes apparently don't matter much...

Gas prices will go up by alot as crude oil becomes harder to mine.

The first Super Computer to surpass the calculated processing and storage power of the brain will happen. The software for AI is still far away.

Big blockbuster movies will surpass the $400 million budget.

Spiderman will be rebooted for the fifth time.
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Re: The Ten Year Thread

Post by Monroe »

Graham predictions:
I agree for the most part with what you have here. I think Trump will win if the Democrats choose another insider. I refused to vote for Clinton and I still have no regrets for that. I don't negotiate my vote with hostage takers. Democratic insiders who use the excuse, "I'm not Trump" are unworthy of my vote. Clinton was a bad person. I don't vote for bad people (this also means Trump won't get my vote either).

I do think there's a strong chance that Trump won't run for reelection because the Russian scandal is real. Now, just because it's real doesn't mean he'll be impeached for it, but I think there's a good chance.

Teaos:
I agree, EU days are numbered. It's fracturing up. The problem, to me as an outsider, is that the EU is not democratic, it takes away sovereignty. It should be abolished and a more democratic system put into place.

I do agree we have a recession coming. I think it'll be worse than the previous one though because the banks are even more powerful now and world governments lack capital and motivation to spend heavily. Austerity does not help in recessions.

McAvoy:
I think 2019 we're supposed to get a human more intelligent than a person. I'd hope within the next 10 years we'll have legislation to protect humanity from AI and protect AI itself but humans are lazy.


My predictions:
I am a bit optimistic on the US's elections. That said, I did call Trump winning once Bernie was out of it. As I said above, I think Trump has a strong chance of not running but if he does he'll only win if a corporate hack like Gillibrand, Booker or Harris get the Democratic nomination. Though, the later two still have a slight chance due to identity politics being real. I think Bernie will run again and I hope he does but he does need to have a VP candidate running with him from the start. If he agrees with me, I think he'll predict Tulsi Gabbard. Warren is a coward and I would be really disappointed if he chose her. Gabbard makes more sense due to her being strong on the military, something he's seen to be weak on (though he's in all the right committees to have foreign relation knowledge).

If Bernie, or someone like him, does not win and Trump or his heir wins, then climate change is going to continue to get worse for the US. I don't know if they cover this in the UK, but the US is still going to meet it's Paris Climate Accord agreement because virtually all states are doing it. It's bad business not to. That bad business though is hurting the US. It'll lower our standing in the world. That said, the Paris Climate Accord is not enough to avoid 3 degree rise and projections say that would devastate the planet, so we're in for a rough go.

By the time 2030 rolls around we should start to see some increased migration. At first I typed, climate migration, but we're already seeing that. Syria was caused by climate change. As that process intensifies, and as we move off oil, we'll start to see more and more failed middle east states. With Madi in charge in Iraq and the brutality that they're taking revenge on ISIS, I think there's a strong chance Iraq will be failed or be having another civil war.

I do agree China can't sustain itself as a world power. But Russia can, and I think we'll see Russia continue to rise-- unless there's fall out in oil prices. A few years ago I paid 96 cents a gallon, 8 years ago when I was paying $4.00 a gallon I never would have guessed that. So it's entirely possible that oil could fall out by then.

Now for the two black swan guesses.
-Alien microbes will be discovered or at least probably discovered
-We'll have a road to extend life for decades.
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Re: The Ten Year Thread

Post by Reliant121 »

I think Graham hits the nail on the mark for the majority of his predictions.

I dispute the EU not being democratic (Fittingly I've had to study the institutions of the EU as part of my law course, well timed!) As each institution is made up of either elected officials or officials subject to elections within their own nation, one can argue it's a relatively democratic system. For an American I suppose you go through an election process for both your lower and upper houses where we do not. Compared to the UK with a hereditary monarch and non-elected upper house, the EU arguably represents a more democratic choice.

As much as I am avidly supportive of the EU as a whole and remain a committed remainer (arguably more so than was during the vote), I suspect that the EU is facing a real challenge. It's first perhaps. As a growing drift between hard left and hard right politics across the Eurozone continues to take shape, I suspect we'll see at least one or two other countries make moves to leave the Union. Italy would probably get my vote but Greece, any number of the Eastern European states etc could see it happen. Maybe the decision to leave the EU actually, perversely, gives us an element of security against the potential collapse of the Eurozone as a whole? WIth the continuing stream of migrants which the Italians, French, Spanish and Greeks are slowly beginning to get more vocal about, I wonder whether it'll be long before that geniality starts to go out the window.

I don't agree that the a global recession will be as bad as it was in 2008. In Europe and the UK at least, regulation regarding the banks and their financial make up are far far far more stringent to prevent the collapse of any big banking institutions. Same with lending as a whole in this country.

The biggest risk I see is the growth of automation. Data processing, manual jobs, more menial tasks will become ever more automated. It's going to leave a lot of people out of work.

Automated cars, I suspect we will have them but I don't think it'll be fully autonomous. I think we'll stop at the Tesla style autopilot for motorways simply because people fear the unknown.

Agreed China's economy will go through a sort of collapse. They're already showing the signs. I suspect Latin America or maybe India will take up the slot.

American election is a real unknown. I don't know enough about your less globally known characters on either side.
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Re: The Ten Year Thread

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Reliant121 wrote:The biggest risk I see is the growth of automation. Data processing, manual jobs, more menial tasks will become ever more automated. It's going to leave a lot of people out of work.
I think I posted a video on this a while back. It made the point that a LOT of jobs are about to be automated, including many that people don't expect - we're not talking about manual and menial work alone, but things like Doctors, Lawyers, writers, sales staff in shops, you name it. There's a huge seismic shift in the work force coming, and right quick.

Amusing aside - during a conversation with Ian about this, I mentioned that there are now computer programs that can diagnose patients better than most GPs. Ian, who works in medical research alongside consultants and researchers, replied that "there are boiled cabbages that can diagnose patients better than most GPs..." :happydevil:


Oh, here's that video.

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Re: The Ten Year Thread

Post by Reliant121 »

Hmmm. Slightly a worry since my chosen profession is down that list.

That being said, I wonder if there will at some stage be legislation to limit automation. Governments and authorities will soon realise they are fast heading to a trainwreck if there's a workforce that cannot work (and therefore cannot spend, leaving our services based economy in tatters).
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Re: The Ten Year Thread

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Reliant121 wrote:Hmmm. Slightly a worry since my chosen profession is down that list.

That being said, I wonder if there will at some stage be legislation to limit automation. Governments and authorities will soon realise they are fast heading to a trainwreck if there's a workforce that cannot work (and therefore cannot spend, leaving our services based economy in tatters).
Reminds me of the old sci fi stories where robots and automated factories produced everything. Great! Nobody really thought to ask how anybody would actually buy those products if they didn't have jobs.

I suspect that a universal basic income is going to have to be the solution. But people really react badly to the idea of people being paid to do nothing, especially in the US.
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Re: The Ten Year Thread

Post by Monroe »

Universal Income has gone up in polls recently. I'm in favor of it as well, as it's the only way to avoid mass anarchy. Civilizations don't survive when 50% of the people don't have jobs.
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Re: The Ten Year Thread

Post by Graham Kennedy »

There are countries actually experimenting with the idea. Finland has been running a program where they paid a group of unemployed people a UBI, with no obligation to look for work. A lot of people are claiming it's a failure since they're ending it this year, but actually they always intended to end it after a set time and then examine the results to see what happened.
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Re: The Ten Year Thread

Post by McAvoy »

The thing about robots taking over jobs is that they still need humans to fix them and maintain them unless we are stupid enough to make robots that can fix other robots.... that seems like a big stage forward towards Skynet.

One thing is that for example the military using drones more often and talk about automated cargo planes is that no matter if those planes need a pilot or not they still require the same amount or more maintenance crew to keep up inspections and maintenance.
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