2010s Predictions Review

One of the lessons I draw from this: listen to gwern.

Most of them seem... quite wrong, and also called out as overconfident at the time. (See, as an example, James Miller here [LW(p) · GW(p)], and gwern's response.) And many of the rest seem pretty business-as-usual; like orthonomal's prediction [LW(p) · GW(p)] that health care expenditures would be approximately as predicted (they came in lower than that, at $3.6 trillion).

Thanks for following up on this!

Orthonormal's comment on subcultures [LW(p) · GW(p)]:

I expect that over the next 10 years, more and more niche cultures will arise and begin to sprout their own characteristics, with the measurable effect that cultural products will have to be targeted more narrowly. I expect that the most popular books, music, etc. of the late 2010s will sell fewer copies in the US than the most popular books, music, etc. of the Aughts, but that total consumption of media will go up substantially as a thousand niche bands, niche fiction markets, etc. become the norm. I expect that high schoolers in 2020 will spend less social time with their classmates and more time with the groups they met through the Internet.

I certainly have an impression of "woah there's lots of subcultures" but I'm not sure how quantified that is. Would be interested in someone a) formalizing a methodology in advance about how to measure it, b) then going and measuring it

Vladimir_Golovin on the uncanny valley [LW(p) · GW(p)]:

I'm 90% confident that the cinematic uncanny valley will be crossed in the next decade. The number applies to movies only, it doesn't apply to humanoid robots (1%) and video game characters (5%).

The most obvious things to look at were Rogue One (I think a lot of people reported being creeped out by Tarkin and Leah? Although I don't think I was)

I'd be interested to see a list of obvious glaring black swans no one had predicted 10 years ago, not even accidentally or ironically. (E.g. the Trump presidency was predicted, ironically, in multiple popular media long ago.)