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Sell: Either people will continue to insist marriages avoid dicey questions of inheritance, lineage, and incest, or the notion of marriage bonds will dissolve altogether.
Buy or Sell: The ongoing conflict in Iraq will be the central issue of the 2008 election.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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Sell: Not as a single nation state it won't be. I will have been absorbed by some larger nation.
Buy or Sell: In a few hundred years, earth, having been unable to sustain it's numbers, will be left by people heading out in search of a new solar system with tons of planets and dozens of moons which will be terraformed and colonized.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Sell: Earth's Population growth rates are getting lower and lower. It is starting to stableize.
Posts: 2121 | Registered: Oct 2005
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Sell: Before then, the Singularity Artificial Intelligence will have gotten disgusted with humans' genocidal treatment of other Earth species, and have shipped humans off to star systems on the other side of the galaxy in tamper-proof auto-piloted relativistic colony ships. Shortly thereafter, the EarthSingularity AI will learn how to prop open microscopic wormholes, and send nano-machines through them to terraform hundreds of planets and moons around various stars. By the time that a Chinese+American colony cluster is automaticly disgorged by their spaceships at their destination star, scores of newly habitable planets and moons will await them. Humans being humans, the leadership will rewrite history so that future generations will think that their Exodus was voluntary rather than tell the truth about humans being booted off of Earth. And since even a minor knowlege of physics and biology will prove that there ain't nothin' natural about one sun being orbited by scores of habitable planets and moons so finely tuned as to allow humans to survive without extensive life support systems, the government/history will also claim that humans terraformed the system. The government will outlaw the higher technologies that created the EarthSingularity and actively censor all research into areas that might lead toward a new Singularity. And create Operatives to enforce their suppression of forbidden technologies, as well as suppress a true reporting of history. So there will be a silly mixture of technologies such as no interstellar travel, high-acceleration interplanetary spaceships, and folks who fight with swords and Colt.45 pistols.
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Did I mention that -- independent from government, even from government knowlege of their true origin or purposes -- there will be Shepherds whose organization will be linked through microscopic wormholes to the EarthSingularity AI, and through it to other Shepherd organizations in other human-colonized stellar systems?
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Sell. Somebody around here is bound to have more patience.
Buy or sell: Melting Greenland ice will expose the ancient city of the Lemurians, and we'll find out that they were lemurs.
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Buy or Sell: It will eventually be shown that no matter how powerful computers get, none based on binary logic can ever be truly "intelligent". Instead, someone will design an intelligent machine whose workings more closely resemble the workings of a human brain.
Posts: 29 | Registered: Mar 2006
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The "neural nets" described in that article seemed like a technique for programming computers rather than something fundamentally different at the level of hardware. And get some sleep!
Posts: 29 | Registered: Mar 2006
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Neural networks are software, and they're implemented using the same computers we're familiar with. It would be possible to build them from scratch in hardware, but no one ever does: the computers we have a perfectly adequate for implmenting them. (I'm an expert in this area.)
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quote:Buy or sell: I will get to sleep before midnight at least one night this week.
Sell. You won't be able to resist the lure of Denny's, which is open 24-7.
Buy or sell: once food processing (like Star Trek's "replicators," or super-Vegemite) gets developed enough we can make convincing steak from veggie-burger stuff . . . it will become immoral to eat meat.
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote: You won't be able to resist the lure of Denny's, which is open 24-7.
*laugh* Unlikely.
I'll take your word on the NNs. Either I misunderstood when they were explained to me 15 years ago (by someone who was researching them at the time), or what he was doing is not what is commonly done. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Sell. However, meat will become prohibitively expensive, because by then land values will be very high, and it takes vastly more land to raise one pound of beef than it does to raise 1 pound of soy.
Buy or Sell: Orson Scott Card will eventually write a mystery novel.
Posts: 29 | Registered: Mar 2006
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Sell: Meat is delicious and people will never be able to resist it.
Buy or Sell: Genetically engineered pigs that are healthier for human consumption will lead to bacon becoming the all time favorite food worldwide.
Posts: 1612 | Registered: Jan 2003
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Sell. However, meat will become prohibitively expensive, because by then land values will be very high, and it takes vastly more land to raise one pound of beef than it does to raise 1 pound of soy.
Buy or Sell: Orson Scott Card will ever write a mystery novel.
Posts: 29 | Registered: Mar 2006
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Buy: already done. Civ 3 was not a fun game. Of course he redeemed himself with Civ 4.
Buy or Sell: society eventually recognizes that professional athletes and actors don't deserve more money than professors and doctors, and salaries adjust accordingly.
Posts: 354 | Registered: Jan 2006
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Buy, unless they make a really stupid nomination choice.
and
Sell: professional anythings get paid what the market will bear. As long as entertainment makes money (which will likely be forever) then the ones who do the entertaining will continue to get paid well. If mass media is ever destroyed, then it's possible that the paychecks to entertainers could shrink, but I don't think that's very likely.
Buy or Sell: In the next 100 years Christianity will see a downturn in popularity such that it will sink to the #3 religion in the world, usurped by islam and buddhism in that order.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Sell: Christianity might fall, but it probably won't be taken by Islalm. The western world wouldn't accept it. Buddhism maybe, though. Everyone would love to eat a lot.
Buy or Sell: China will invade Taiwan within 15 years.
Posts: 2121 | Registered: Oct 2005
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Sell: Taiwan is less important to China than it's image internationally, which would be very much harmed by such an invasion. However, the two countries will eventually reunite by peaceful means, after China abandons communism and becomes a democracy.
Buy or sell: In the year 3000, atheism will be more common than christianity or islam.
Posts: 29 | Registered: Mar 2006
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Sell: It may in fact be true that the majority of people will be atheists, but surveyers will find it impossible to add 'atheism' to the list of choices of religion. Instead, the vast majority of those surveyed will be 'Undecided'.
Buy or Sell: Within the next 50 years, the apostrophe will revolt due to continued abuse and remove itself from the english language entirely. This will lead to no end of confusion for the few people still alive who value punctuation, but in general, netizens will find it a huge relief. OTOH, German speakers will be very upset to discover that the English-abandoning apostrophe has taken over German to the point that virtually every word is peppered with it. Americans will find this very amusing.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Se'll: a'postrophe's are al'ready t'aking ov'er!
Buy or sell: A glue remover that will get that @#$%!! glue off my wall without eating the paint off will be available in our lifetimes.
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Well, that depends on the type of glue... If it's rubber cement, you can rub it off. If it's superglue, nail-polish remover works well. If it's PVA glue, it should come off easily with any mild detergent. If it's epoxy, you're probably going to have to sand it off and repaint.
Buy or Sell: In 500 years, fewer than 50% of the population will regularly sleep 7-9 hours, at night, on a 24 hour cycle - the sleep cycle considered normal today.
Posts: 29 | Registered: Mar 2006
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Buy: And the popularity of zombie movies will have grown to epic proportions. Not that there's any correlation.
Buy or Sell: In the next 10 years, movie musicals will make a huge comeback, prompting a revival of all forms of formation dancing, including ballroom, square dancing, and folk.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Sell: Musicals and dancing are at the apex of their popularity now (cf Chicago, Moulin Rouge, Red Hot Ballroom, Dancing with the Stars) and will only decline over the next 10 years
Buy or Sell: The former talent of Pixar will produce a phenomenally mediocre picture now that they've been absorbed by Disney.
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Buy or Sell: Technological advancements will allow the average person to live 100, by 2100.
Buy: I actually am quite sure that aging will be preventable altogether within the next 100 years. Cancer cells do not age because their telomeres do not reduce in length over time like the rest of our cells do. There's nothing that says the rest of our cells can't be changed to prevent telomere decay as well. The rest of aging appears to be DNA decay, and perhaps we can "refresh" our DNA every 35 years or so. I believe that scientists will invent a process which can stop our cells from aging, allowing them to replicate indefinitely, stopping us from ever growing old. When will this happen? Right as I am too old for the process, or right after I die from old age.
Buy or Sell: If this process is developed, would we require that someone be sterilized before administering it to them? Or would it be banned altogether?
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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Sell. People won't have to be sterilized, because you will have to be filthy rich to afford the operation. This will create large numbers of children born to rich families, thereby dividing the amount of money available to them exponentially. This will cause the families to become poor and unable to afford the treatment. See, it all evens out, sorta.
Buy or Sell: Nickelback puts out one more album, then are assassinated by a deranged Cobainite.
Posts: 1612 | Registered: Jan 2003
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Buy: Yes, but not until some other country get's a space program close enough to ours so that we have competition. Especially if that country is China.
Buy or Sell: This thread goes for 10+ pages.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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Sell: Ford hasn't been in a lot of unqualified successes of late, he's getting too old for believable intense action, and George "sand is rough" Lucas has script approval rights.
Buy or Sell: By 2010, only niche PC entertainment software will be anything but console conversions.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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Sell: Seeing as how it is April 1st and no one's reportedly played any pranks on Hatrack... well, none that I came across anyway.
For Sale: One 5'11" Japanese-Caucasian male, intelligent, handsome, witty, and goes by the name of Juxtapose.
Posts: 168 | Registered: Feb 2006
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Buy. This summer, a meteor wipes out life on earth. People are bound to blame whoever controls the White House.
Buy or sell: old age is outlawed by 2010, absolving insurance companies from having to pay for it, and saving Social Security from bankruptcy.
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Buy or sell: Due to rising demographic problems, and human rights protests, Communist China will have a revolution by the people by 2050.
Posts: 2121 | Registered: Oct 2005
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sell: it'll be way sooner then that if things keep progressing the way they are, with all of the child restriction laws
buy or sell: A serious epidemic will ravage throughout the world if its population keeps increasing the way it is.
Posts: 9 | Registered: Apr 2006
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Sell: If it happens, it will only affect nations with very large populations, ones with high growth rates, or developing ones. (Crap. The U.S. is screwed in all ways but the last.)
Buy or Sell: The U.S. population explosion will be solved by 2025, and we won't have a population of 420 Million, ( A 122 million jump from now) by 2050.
Posts: 2121 | Registered: Oct 2005
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Sell. We demand the right to reproduce ourselves into extinction as free=-thinking, independent Americans! Now could you move your elbow? I'm gonna inhale.
Buy or Sell: Misguided intellectual property and patent laws will cause someone's very birth to be an infringement in the next hundred years.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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The U.S. is screwed in all ways but the last.)
