Whole Earth: Accountable predictions: long bets: a chance to back your prescience with your pocketbo

The faster things change the more important anticipating the future becomes. It is no accident that science fiction became popular at the same historical moment that a person could witness the world change in his or her own lifetime. Thinking about the future was no longer philosophical. It was personal.

These days we pay attention to predictions in our daily efforts to figure out how the world will change as we age. Yet making predictions is an act with little or no consequences. If a well-regarded guru makes a prediction that turns out to be correct, he or she will likely let everyone know. But if the prediction is wrong, no one remembers and the guru won't remind us. Without pain for being wrong, predictions are made casually and often irresponsibly.

Long Bets, a project Stewart Brand and I founded, is a service aimed at making predictions more responsible in the context of making our society more inclined to take the long view. Here's how it works.

People with very strong and informed opinions about the future in a certain arena are encouraged to make a Long Bet. They head to the Long Bets website (www.longbets.org) where they write simple statements of their belief in the form of a wager. For instance: "I bet there will be a woman president by the year 2030." If this was your bet, you would then compose a short argument why you believe this to be true. This argument is the most important part of the bet, because it stands alongside your wager and is the bait for a challenger.

If a challenger (also writing in the website) takes up your wager, he or she writes a competing argument as to why your logic is wrong (silly, stupid, or misguided). The Long Bets site acts like an eBay for bets. It matches opposing views, and then carries the bet into the future and reminds the world when the bet is ready to be resolved.

In order to bet, you must be willing to put up real money. This filters out the frivolous. The minimum amount is $1,000, so anyone betting must be serious about their belief. The real money brings truth or con sequences to the bet. Losing hurts.

Because even private betting between persons is technically illegal in the US, Long Bets has set up the wager as a competition where charities win. For example, each bettor makes a $1,000 tax-deductible contribution to charity. Long Bets Foundation holds the bets. The bettors each inform Long Bets which charity they want to receive BOTH contributions at the conclusion of the bet. If I bet $1,000 on a woman president by 2030 and want the winnings to go to NOW, and my opponent bets against a woman president and wants the winnings to go to the Catholic Church, then if my prediction is correct by 2030, the entire $2,000 plus one half of the investment growth over those twenty-eight years goes to NOW. If my opponent wins, the contribution goes to the Catholic charity. The loser loses by having the charitable contribution go to a nonprofit the bettor did not choose, and by having Long Bets, monitor of the bet, remind the world at the due time that his or her argument was wrong.

In the long run, this is what is important. The logic, perspective, and ideology of the winning bet gets credit and attention, and therefore is rewarded, while the losing argument is seen as visibly wrong and can be discouraged. A long-term perspective could be nourished, and we might even be able to learn how to predict better, since now there would be a feedback loop, a way to learn.

We've started with a bunch of bets made by well-known pundits and mover-types. There are now early bets at longbets.org waiting for people who find them outrageous and obviously wrong. Here is your chance to trumpet your logic and view of the world. If you take it seriously enough, and want to help a charity along the way, make it a long bet.

A few long bets now on the record

Bet                           Duration    Yes

A computer or "machine        2002-2029   Ray Kurzweil
intelligence" will pass
the Turing Test by 2029

By 2030, commercial           2002-2030   Craig Mundi
passengers will routinely
fly in pilotless planes.

By 2012, The Wall Street      2002-2012   Esther Dyson
Journal and The New
York Times will have
referred to Russia as "the
world leader in software
development" or words
to that effect.

The universe will             2002 - ?    Danny Hillis
eventually stop expanding.

The US men's soccer           2002 - ?    Mike Eliot
team will win the World
Cup before the Red Sox
win the World Series.

Bet                           No                Stakes

A computer or "machine        Mitchell Kapor    $20,000
intelligence" will pass
the Turing Test by 2029

By 2030, commercial           Eric Schmidt      $2,000
passengers will routinely
fly in pilotless planes.

By 2012, The Wall Street      Bill Campbell     $10,000
Journal and The New
York Times will have
referred to Russia as "the
world leader in software
development" or words
to that effect.

The universe will             Nathan Myhrvold   $2,000
eventually stop expanding.

The US men's soccer           Ted Danson        $2,000
team will win the World
Cup before the Red Sox
win the World Series.

Kevin Kelly edited Whole Earth Review for six years, and was charter editor of Wired. He guest-edited the Winter 2000 "mini-Whole Earth Catalog" issue of Whole Earth. Kevin's fertile mind has helped launch the All Species Inventory (www.all-species.org), the Long Now Project (www.longnow.org), and now Long Bets. His latest book (all images, no words) is Asia Grace (2002; Taschen).