What exactly counts as a "book"? Are book-sized fanfics books? What about threads on spacebattles? Is A Chemical Hunger a book? What's the difference between an audiobook and a scripted podcast? Clearly HPMOR podcast is an audiobook despite its name, but is something like Welcome to Night Vale a book? (I mean the podcast, not the books). I think the question of how many books people read is highly underspecified.
What's worse, these answers probably change over time. If you explained to someone in 1952 what an audiobook is, they'd probably not consider it a book, but now we do. So it's not just measuring how people's reading habits change, but also how the definition of a "book" changes...
The other predictions are more meaningful, but where are your probability estimates? How are we supposed to grade you on accuracy in 30 years? :P
I know it sounds heretical, but the lack of probabilities and specification is on purpose. When the point of a prediction is to divine the future, I agree you should be nailing things down and taking bets––that makes sense for something like forecasting the price of Bitcoin a year from now, or guessing whether Russia invades Ukraine.
But for me, the point of looking this far into the future is really to understand the present. I want to get a thick, gisty level of understanding, and lawyering the predictions squeezes them down to things that may or may not literally come true, but miss the spirit.
So lots of things might change about books, but the point I really want to make is this: people *think* we used to make big meals of knowledge and narratives, and now we only eat junky little snacks. That doesn't seem to be true––although the meals we eat are different, they seem just as hearty as they ever were. That might mean we underestimate people's intellectual hunger, and so whatever happens next, we should be more skeptical of our intuition that changes in technology will sap people's attention so much that they could never consume something vaguely book-like.
"clubs play us trance from france:" love it! clearly you're part of the new wave of writers; I wonder your class--more interlocutor, curator, or a bit of both? Fascinating stuff here! And I must say that since I've been away from mainstream US popular culture for nearly the past thirty years, you are correct: unintelligible! Perhaps your blog will help me bridge the gaps over the years... if I'm not too lost in space.
Thanks! I appreciate you reading. I guess I hope to do what an AI can't, walking around and having interesting experiences, turning those experiences into ideas, and then watering them and fertilizing them with a combination of attention, inattention, and conversation with other humans who are doing the same.
As far as being out of touch with popular culture goes––Avatar was a fun movie, otherwise I don't think you missed much.
You're a bit late on your prediction. The number typically quoted for firearms in the U.S. these days is closer to between 400 and 420 million.
For the last few years, the U.S. has been adding 10-12 million new firearms into civilian hands per year, which shows no apparent slowdown, given that it's estimated we've had several million first-time gun owners in the last 5-6 years.
Given an estimate that from here on, new gun purchase rates are slashed to only a tenth of what they are now (not a realistic scenario, it'll probably stay much higher), then we're looking at your 450 million guns as *a minimum*.
The likelihood is closer to 100 million between now and then, if not closer to 150 million. Advanced Additive manufacturing technologies will likely ensure that even more will be made that will be untraceable, and therefore uncountable.
But more so, the Bruen decision this year will likely end gun control as we have traditionally known it, with most organizations already struggling in the last 10-15 years, propped up mainly by billionaire Michael Bloomberg's pet projects such as Everytown. Gone will be the egregious bans, the arbitrary limits, waiting periods and exclusions. But most important will be the opening up to, and normalizing of concealed carry in the populous Blue states such as swept the rest of the nation since the late 80's.
Half of the states in this country now have no permit requirement in order to carry a concealed firearm in public - truly a return to the early days of the U.S. gun laws (or lack thereof). It is extremely likely that this number will come close to being in the low to mid 40 states by 2050, with Blue states likely holding out as long as they can. Even where permitting systems remain, this will further drive gun ownership, as citizens of those states will no longer be deprived of the privileges of public carry currently still reserved for the elites and politically connected in those places.
If gun control was a stock, it's long, long past the date to cash out.
It's likely to make very little difference. Rising temperatures will have some effects across the globe, but with at most a 2C change being predicted (and the actual likely change being less than that), don't expect any significant changes to come from it.
What exactly counts as a "book"? Are book-sized fanfics books? What about threads on spacebattles? Is A Chemical Hunger a book? What's the difference between an audiobook and a scripted podcast? Clearly HPMOR podcast is an audiobook despite its name, but is something like Welcome to Night Vale a book? (I mean the podcast, not the books). I think the question of how many books people read is highly underspecified.
What's worse, these answers probably change over time. If you explained to someone in 1952 what an audiobook is, they'd probably not consider it a book, but now we do. So it's not just measuring how people's reading habits change, but also how the definition of a "book" changes...
The other predictions are more meaningful, but where are your probability estimates? How are we supposed to grade you on accuracy in 30 years? :P
All good questions!
I know it sounds heretical, but the lack of probabilities and specification is on purpose. When the point of a prediction is to divine the future, I agree you should be nailing things down and taking bets––that makes sense for something like forecasting the price of Bitcoin a year from now, or guessing whether Russia invades Ukraine.
But for me, the point of looking this far into the future is really to understand the present. I want to get a thick, gisty level of understanding, and lawyering the predictions squeezes them down to things that may or may not literally come true, but miss the spirit.
So lots of things might change about books, but the point I really want to make is this: people *think* we used to make big meals of knowledge and narratives, and now we only eat junky little snacks. That doesn't seem to be true––although the meals we eat are different, they seem just as hearty as they ever were. That might mean we underestimate people's intellectual hunger, and so whatever happens next, we should be more skeptical of our intuition that changes in technology will sap people's attention so much that they could never consume something vaguely book-like.
"clubs play us trance from france:" love it! clearly you're part of the new wave of writers; I wonder your class--more interlocutor, curator, or a bit of both? Fascinating stuff here! And I must say that since I've been away from mainstream US popular culture for nearly the past thirty years, you are correct: unintelligible! Perhaps your blog will help me bridge the gaps over the years... if I'm not too lost in space.
Thanks! I appreciate you reading. I guess I hope to do what an AI can't, walking around and having interesting experiences, turning those experiences into ideas, and then watering them and fertilizing them with a combination of attention, inattention, and conversation with other humans who are doing the same.
As far as being out of touch with popular culture goes––Avatar was a fun movie, otherwise I don't think you missed much.
"Unfortunately, they’re wrong."
Unfortunately? Thankfully, they're wrong.
You're a bit late on your prediction. The number typically quoted for firearms in the U.S. these days is closer to between 400 and 420 million.
For the last few years, the U.S. has been adding 10-12 million new firearms into civilian hands per year, which shows no apparent slowdown, given that it's estimated we've had several million first-time gun owners in the last 5-6 years.
Given an estimate that from here on, new gun purchase rates are slashed to only a tenth of what they are now (not a realistic scenario, it'll probably stay much higher), then we're looking at your 450 million guns as *a minimum*.
The likelihood is closer to 100 million between now and then, if not closer to 150 million. Advanced Additive manufacturing technologies will likely ensure that even more will be made that will be untraceable, and therefore uncountable.
But more so, the Bruen decision this year will likely end gun control as we have traditionally known it, with most organizations already struggling in the last 10-15 years, propped up mainly by billionaire Michael Bloomberg's pet projects such as Everytown. Gone will be the egregious bans, the arbitrary limits, waiting periods and exclusions. But most important will be the opening up to, and normalizing of concealed carry in the populous Blue states such as swept the rest of the nation since the late 80's.
Half of the states in this country now have no permit requirement in order to carry a concealed firearm in public - truly a return to the early days of the U.S. gun laws (or lack thereof). It is extremely likely that this number will come close to being in the low to mid 40 states by 2050, with Blue states likely holding out as long as they can. Even where permitting systems remain, this will further drive gun ownership, as citizens of those states will no longer be deprived of the privileges of public carry currently still reserved for the elites and politically connected in those places.
If gun control was a stock, it's long, long past the date to cash out.
How about factoring in global warming?
It's likely to make very little difference. Rising temperatures will have some effects across the globe, but with at most a 2C change being predicted (and the actual likely change being less than that), don't expect any significant changes to come from it.