New Year's Predictions Thread

Because the giant blue Na'vi people are not human.

Avatar and Digital Emily are the reasons why I'm so confident. Digital actors in Avatar are very impressive, and as a (former) CG nerd I do think that Avatar has crossed the valley -- or at least found the way across it -- I just don't think that this is proof enough for general audience and critics.

I agree with you. The uncanny valley refers to rendering human actors only. It is not necessary to render a whole movie from scratch. It is much more work, but only work.

IMO, The Life of Benjamin Button was the first movie that managed to cross the valley.

My reply is here. BTW, major CG packages like Autodesk Maya and 3DS Max were at the level of $5000 and below for over a decade.

I once watched a video of an Iraqi sniper at work, and it was disturbingly similar to what I see in realistic military video games (I don't play them myself, but I've seen a couple.)

Movies are 'pre-computed' so you can use a real human actor as a data source for animations, plus you have enough editing time to spot and iron out any glitches, but in a video game facial animations are generated on-the-fly, so all you can use is a model that perfectly captures human facial behavior. I don't think that it can be realistically imitated by blending between pre-recorded animations like it's done today with mo-cap animations -- e.g. you can't pre-record eye movement for a game character.

As for the robots, they are also real-time, AND they would need muscle / eye / face movement implemented physically (as a machine, not just software), hence the lower confidence level.

The obvious answer would be "offline rendering".

Even if the non-interactivity of pre-rendered video weren't an issue, games as a category can't afford to pre-render more than the occasional cutscene here or there: a typical modern game is much longer than a typical modern movie -- typically by at least one order of magnitude, i.e. 15 to 20 hours of gameplay, and the storyline often branches as well. In terms of dollars grossed per hours rendered, games simply can't afford to keep up. Thus, the rise of real-time hardware 3D rendering in both PC gaming and console gaming.

An ideal indicator would be a regular movie or trailer screening where the audience failed to detect a synthetic actor who (who?) played a lead role, or at least had significant screen time during the screening.

Aren't these more likely to be done by libraries than languages?

I'd think it likely that it will be some XML variant.

I hope not. Something like JSON is far less verbose.

If AR gets any sort of popularity, even just among early adopters, I guarantee you that there will be several competing tools for doing what you describe, with more coming out every month.

Well, your criticism was correct.

(Though some other trends have obviously reversed- streaming music ate album and single sales, which were increasing rapidly in the iTunes era of the 2000s.)

Thanks for the link! I didn't know there was already a version of this theory out there, and I didn't know the actual figures.

So what do I make of this data (assuming the veracity of the Wikipedia summary, since I'm not dedicated enough to read the papers)? Well, I'm surprised by it.

Eliezer seems to be predicting that videoconferencing will become common in the next decade. Yes, some use it now, but it is still not common. I predict that it will not become common until someone uses a utility to modify your appearance so that when you look at the eyes of the person on the screen, your image on the remote end will look like it is looking at the eyes of the person on the other end. This might well be developed in much less than 10 years, however.

I suspect Eliezer is making broad predictions about what is important in the next 10 years. As if someone said smartphone for the next decade in 2000. Not giving too much detail makes it more likely to be true...

I voted all the betting comments up because I think this is awesome. Does this kind of thing happen often here?

Do you have a PayPal account? I'd be willing to wager $50 USD to be paid within 2 weeks of Jan 1st 2011 if you're interested. I can provide my email address. That would rely on mutual trust but I don't know of any websites that can act as trusted intermediaries. Do you know of anything like that?

I've added this prediction to PredictionBook: http://predictionbook.com/predictions/1565 based on the description at http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Bets_registry

So now that 2010 is more than half over with no attack that I know of, have you or mattnewport's opinions changed?

(I notice that domestic terrorism seems kind of spiky - quite a few in one year, and none the next: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Islamist_terrorism_in_the_United_States omits entire years but has several in one year, like 2007 or 2009.)

You'll have to define what constitutes an attempt.

On further reflection I think I need to revise my estimate down somewhat. Thinking on it further my 30% estimate is conditional on general trends that I think are more likely than not to occur but I did not correctly incorporate them into the estimate for secession. I think 10-15% is probably a better estimate taking that into account.

I think the political pressure for secession will stem from an extended period of economic weakness in the US and widespread fiscal crises in states like California and New York. If, as seems likely, federal aid is seen to go disproportionately to certain states that have the most troubled finances then the states that feel they are losing out will begin to see secession as an attractive option. My original estimate did not sufficiently account for the possibility that I am wrong about the economic troubles ahead however.

Britain was in the EU, but it kept Pounds Sterling, it never adopted the Euro.

I guess now is a good time for a 6 month review of how the predictions in this thread are panning out.

Next Year

• Holiday retail sales will be below consensus forecasts leading to some market turmoil in the early part of the year as the 'recovery' starts to look shaky (70%).

Retail sales were a bit worse than expected but despite a bit of a dip in the stock market in late Jan / early Feb it took longer than I expected for the recovery in the US to be seriously questioned. It's only in the last few weeks that talk of a double dip recession has become really widespread. The problems in Europe and more recently in China brought the global recovery into question a bit earlier but overall the jury is still out. I think I could argue that this prediction was correct as written but I was expecting more problems earlier in the year.

• A developed country will suffer a currency crisis - most likely either the UK, US or one of the weaker Eurozone economies (60%).

I think the problems in Greece (and to a lesser extent Spain and Portugal) and the resulting turmoil in the Euro are sufficient to say this prediction was correct. The UK pound has also had a rough time but in both cases 'currency crisis' could still be argued. I expect further problems before the year is out.

• A new round of bank failures and financial turmoil as the wave of Option ARM mortgage resets starts to hit and commercial real estate collapses including at least one major bank failure (a 'too big to fail' bank) (75%).

Hasn't happened yet. Option ARM resets will be picking up through the second half of the year so I still expect problems from that. A little less confident that it will mean a major bank failure - that is somewhat dependent on the political climate as well.

• A major terrorist attack in the US (50%) most likely with a connection to Pakistan. The response will be disproportionate to the magnitude of the attack (99%).

The attempted bombing in Times Square appears to have had a Pakistan link. It can't really be called a 'major' attack however. I still think there is a fair chance of this happening before the year is out but odds are a little lower (my estimate of how incompetent most terrorists are has increased a little).

• Apple will launch a tablet and will aim to do for print media what it has done for music (80%).

The iPad and iBooks launch bear this out I think.

• Democrats will lose seats in Congress and the Senate in the elections but Republicans will not gain control of either house (70%).

Won't know until November. I think the prediction is still reasonable.

• One or more developed countries will see significant civil unrest due to ongoing problems with the economy (50%).

The riots and strikes in Greece and strikes in Spain arguably confirm this. The prediction is a little vague however and I was expecting somewhat more serious civil unrest than we've seen so far. It remains to be seen what will happen as the rest of the year unfolds.

Next Decade

• US will undergo a severe currency crisis (more likely) or sovereign default (less likely) (75%).

No change here.

• Developed countries' welfare states will begin to collapse (state retirement and unemployment benefits and health care will be severely curtailed or eliminated in more than one developed country) (75%).

Some early signs of this with retirement age increases and other austerity measures in Greece and elsewhere in Europe. I still expect to see a lot more of this before the decade is out.

• UK will undergo a severe currency crisis or sovereign default (90%).

Odds on this down slightly I think - there's some evidence that the new government is serious about addressing the problems. Less evidence that they will succeed.

• One or more countries will drop out of the Euro or the entire system will collapse (75%).

I think the problems here have been more widely recognized than when I wrote the prediction. My odds haven't changed much though.

• A US state will secede (30%).

No change here. And it's secession week.

Are you really certain that the federal government would send the military in to prevent a state seceding if secession was clearly the democratic will of the people of the state? I wouldn't rule out the possibility but I think it would be an unlikely outcome.

Texas is probably the most likely but I can imagine a number of other possibilities. MatthewB's post above outlines a plausible case for California for example.

Haven't riots been going on in Greece pretty regularly? (eg, 11/2009) Did you put at 50% the chance that the riots in Greece would stop? Maybe it was reasonable to put at 50% the chance that the riots would stay at 2009 levels and 50% the chance that they would go back to 12/2008 levels, but it's not clear that "significant" should mean that.

none of them seem crazy to me

A US state will secede (30%)

None of the others do, but this one seems ludicrous to me.

These seem overly optimistic to me. Maybe increase the numbers by 50% to 100% other than 99?

Unless I'm missing something, looks like #1 is actually correct... 2019 GDP PPP per capita for Singapore was 103,181 according to IMF, which adjusts to 84775.10 according to the first inflation calculator on Google.

How many opportunities do you think we get to hear someone make clearly falsifiable ten-year predictions, and have them turn out to be false, and then have that person have the honour necessary to say "I was very, very wrong?" Not a lot! So any reflections you have to add on this would I think be super valuable. Thanks!

How about this - I win if before he leaves office I can point to a speech Obama gave in which he advocates means testing Social Security. Otherwise you win. The speech has to be given after today, so you don't fear this is some kind of trick.

If I win I get $100 from you. If you win I give you $233. But with these odds I'm indifferent to making the bet. So for me to be willing to bet I want you to agree that if Obama makes such a speech you have to pay me right away.

You are the second person to mistake my intent. I meant in the field of mobile electronics. Take a look at where lithium ion is on this chart.

I meant commonly used for powering portable electronics. I don't assign a high probability to this. It is the upper bound of what I think worth discussing.

it would be nice to sort the posts by topic.

Isn't that what tags are for?

I'm basically betting that a short term lack of oil (as evidenced by reduced production in 2008 and high current price), will put a break on that expansion. Or the industrialization of china will only happen in if first would countries reduce their energy consumption to allow it, as they did in 2008.

Data from the BP energy review.

This prediction is technically consistent with my prediction (although this doesn't mean that I don't disagree with it anyway.)

That's exactly what happened; I gave Eliezer $10, and he will pay me $1000 when I win the bet.

My bet with Eliezer can be found at http://lesswrong.com/lw/wm/disjunctions_antipredictions_etc/.

I said there at the time, "As for what constitutes the AI, since we don't have any measure of superhuman intelligence, it seems to me sufficient that it be clearly more intelligent than any human being." Everyone's agreement that it is clearly more intelligent would be the "objective" standard.

In any case, I am risk averse, so I don't really want to bet on the next decade, which according to my prediction would give me a 90% chance of losing the bet. The bet with Eliezer was indefinite, since I already paid; I am simply counting on it happening within our lifetimes.

About 3 months ago.

Decoding spoken words using local field potentials recorded from the cortical surface

Yep, electrodes, as in the gaming devices. Headsets is the form factor I have in mind, so not necessarily electrodes if this is to be believed. I don't want to commit to burdensome implementation details but voice isn't what I mean - it doesn't count as "unobtrusive" to my way of thinking.

I envision something where I can just form the thought "nearest MacDonalds" (ETA: or somehow bring up a menu selecting that among even a restricted set) without it being conspicuous for an outside observer, and get some form of feedback from the device leading me in the right direction. Visual overlay would work, but so would a physical tug.

Any updates to your original prediction?

I think he just meant with liquid water, some type of atmosphere, and approximately earth sized. Given this, my guess is that they find one within the next three years. If he meant "habitable" to human beings without protection, i.e. oxygen atmosphere etc., then this is extremely unlikely (less than 2% chance) that they will find such a thing by 2020.

I think I'd give better-than-even odds for either date, and would be shocked if no one else would.

At even odds I would take a loan to make the bet.

http://www.nasa.gov/ames/kepler/kepler-186f-the-first-earth-size-planet-in-the-habitable-zone/#.U1DouvldW_U

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1628822

You seem to be about ten times more confident than us. Is that down to greater knowledge - or overconfidence?

You seem to be about ten times less confident than me. Is that down to greater knowledge - or underconfidence?

Here's an example of what I had in mind by "the Bayesian paradigm" -- see especially pp.12-13. Bayesian reasoning may be the one correct form of reasoning about probabilities, just as the first-order predicate calculus is the one correct form of reasoning about the true and the false, but that does not make of it a method to automatically solve problems.

I also had in mind something broader than just Bayesian reasoning, although that's a major part: the coupling of that with a goal system based on utility functions and their maximisation (the major thrust of the paper I linked).

Thanks for putting that up. I hadn't been aware of PredictionBook, so I've just made an account and posted a more precise prediction there myself.

2010 is almost over, so the odds of my being right are now considerably less.

Probably a good reason to adjust the estimate down. On the other hand I was 11 in 2000 so I wouldn't have been on this kind of site anyway, and conditional on the prediction that news-betting becomes more prestigious rationality almost certainly will.

Point taken, with the real point being that I have no sense of how long a decade is, so I'll adjust that down to a 20%

I have stayed in touch with a different web community for five years, with which I'm still in touch, although only barely at the level of once a month. So my odds for awesomeness overcoming shelf-lifes may be higher than for most.

I probably meant for claim 3 to exclude sports.

Have you not heard that they discovered a way to use graphene as a one to one replacement for copper in chip production. That alone will allow speeds of 12-15GHz.

I would put faster chips using multicore running at many times current speeds will be available by 2011-2012 at near 100% certainty.

In terms of political power.

I'm predicting that in 2020 you'll look back at this blog comment and say, "Wow, he sure called that one."

I agree that there is little to no separation, but I think a distinction can be made. Namely, there are two different words that mean different things. When predicting what is going to affect people you can probably find a way to split the techno-political mash usefully. This may be as simple as using one word over the other.

There's a lot of ruin in a nation. The main axis nations of World War II -- Germany, Italy, and Japan -- provide some examples of nations that were really, really traumatized and damaged. Out of the three, only Germany split apart, and that only because of competing foreign occupiers. Even then it reunited as soon as it got the chance. I don't think there's enough hostility or just plain difference between most of the states west of the Mississippi to cause them to separate, especially under threat of external attack. If anything, I'd expect them to band together as tightly as possible.

I don't think the US would go away even if the eastern seaboard was nothing but glassy craters and deadly microbes.

That being said, it's conceivable that some technological or ideological change could weaken the central government to the point that states would be let go, though it's hard to imagine something that drastic shaping up in as little as 9 years. I'm also not sure what change could happen which would break the federal government while leaving state governments intact.

Ok, though-- in a decade, something very odd could happen. I don't think a lot of people were predicting the dissolution of the USSR before it happened.

Meanwhile, sous vides don't seem to be a lot cheaper or more popular, but I didn't put as extreme a probability on that one.

I meant 0%, but you probably have a point that I should present the chance as negligible rather than non-existent. Is there a limit, though? Does it make sense to say that there's a non-zero chance that a state will propose secession and be allowed to leave by tomorrow morning?

I think you could when I made the prediction-- what I had in mind was a sous vide cooker that you didn't need to put together.

Thanks, mostly.

I think it would have been more fair to make my predictions 1. "A state will not try to secede" and "A state will not succeed at seceding".

Other than that, it's interesting to see how uncertain I am that some of my predictions are the result of my own thinking rather than emotional effects from people I've been reading.

(3) What I had in mind for an EU-style organization was dropping restrictions on trade and travel. At this point, I'm not as optimistic, but that feels more like mood than new information. I don't know whether dropping restrictions on trade requires a common currency.

(4) Computer-fabbed custom-fitted shoes are a lot easier than AI. If you don't think that's at all likely within 10 years, does this affect any predictions you might have for AI? Your answer is about there not being a market for them-- I'd say that the market isn't perceived. Either way, I don't get the impression that that tech is ready to do it yet.

It might make more sense for a computer to measure the feet and make the pieces, but have human beings put the shoes together. :-/

I'm also assuming shoes would be mailed rather than being shoes on demand-- shoes on demand would be another jump in technology.

Thinking about it a little more, the footprint in stores could be pretty small-- just the measuring device. I'm not sure how much support from store staff it would be apt to need at the beginning.

This sort of development is also dependent on how much capital is available, and I'm not feeling optimistic about that.

(5) The conveyor belt for new aspects of food (perhaps unsurprisingly) seems to be more efficient for prepared food and ingredients than for cooking methods. I still haven't had sous vide food myself, but everything I've heard about it makes it sound wonderful. I think there will be a sudden shift with sous vide food becoming available in mid-range restaurants followed by a lot of people wanting to cook it.

ETA: The website didn't just format the numbers into pretty paragraphing, it "corrected" the numbers.

No, there is a reasonable (IMO >1%) chance China could overtake the USA or EU in the next ten years.

And more generally, the distinction innate/learned is overly simplistic in a lot of contexts; rather, there are adaptations that determine the way organism develops depending on its environment. The standard reference I know of is

J. Tooby & L. Cosmides (1992). `The psychological foundations of culture'. In J. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (eds.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. Oxford University Press, New York.

I think these research programs represent something without a clear historical precedent. Traditional economics and generative linguistics, for example, could be compared to pre-scientific disciplines that were overthrown by scientific disciplines. But both exhibit a high degree of formal and institutional sophistication. I don't think pre-Copernican astronomy had the same level of sophistication. Economics also has data (although so did geocentric astronomy) whereas the generative tradition in linguistics considers data misleading and prefers intuitive judgement. What neither has is a systematic experimental research program or a desire to integrate with the natural sciences.

Cognitivism is essentially Cartesian philosophy with a computer analogy and experiments. In practice it just becomes experimental psychology with some extra jargon. Nativism, too, comes from Cartesian philosophy (Chomsky was quite explicit about this). While cognitivism has experiments it has an interpretation that isn't founded in experiment (the type of computer the brain is supposed to be and the algorithms it could be said to run is not addressed) and an opposition to integration with the natural sciences (the so-called "autonomy of psychology" thesis).

These research programs are similar to pre-scientific research programs but have managed to persist in a world where you have to attempt to "look scientific" in order to secure research grants and they reflect this fact.

You point to many problems and I wouldn't take any bets because of these. It would be too difficult to judge who had won. On the nature/nurture debate: Empiricism evolved into constructivism/interactionism (i.e., the developing organism interacting with the environment with genes driving development), which is the dominate view in biology, and it's not obvious what, precisely, modern Nativists believe. But it is obvious that they still exist since naive nativist talk persists almost everywhere else. It's similarly difficult to figure out what computationalists mean by their analogies and the degree to which they intend them to be analogies vs. literal propositions. This is probably why the natural sciences tend not to base research programs on analogies. What is clear is that they have a particular style of interpreting their results in terms of representations and sequential processing that is clearly at odds with biology and display no interest in addressing the issue.

I was right on all of these:

• No collapse of German government in 2010
• No ban on motorcycles in London in 2010
• No Congestion zone enlargement in 2010

I'm ridiculously confident about predictions for 2020 as well.

At least, we already have humans with the prenatal genetic screening. This can qualify as a (slow) Self Optimizing Process of the human kind. Better and better children are born.

A software/hardware analog could also be rapid.

http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Really_powerful_optimization_process

"S" stands for "Self" here.

I predict that I will be upvoted for correctly predicting this.

You have no way of knowing that he's pulling them out of his ass. And even if he is, I think it's appropriate for this thread. There are dozens of equally unjustified predictions below that you didn't jump on. WTF?

A user's karma is not a causal explanation for any ratio of Less Wrong readership to number-ass-pulling exhibited by that user.

I shouldn't think there's anything wrong (within this thread) with just stating your probability estimates, so long as you're doing so in good faith. YMMV on whether the conditional clause holds in this case, obviously...

Every prediction of the future is a wild guess. It was just a wild guess back in 1931, that an A bomb will explode in a decade or two.

Need 100 more examples?

It's just my estimation, if you have a better one, please fell free to express it!

What's up Jack, can't you comprehend what you read? You have to present the evidence of my mortality to ME. It is irrelevant whether or not I ever die.

And you're the one who is trying to tell me that Unknowns' linked article means anything?

I have changed my opinion of you, and I think that Less Wrong is not suitable for you.

Thank you. I don't care what you think about my suitability here, and I suspect your motives for so advising me to be based in unjustified ill-will. Please restrict your subsequent responses to me to the topic in hand.

If you look back over your exchange, several of us have replied in good faith to clarify your assertion and expand upon the areas of disagreement. You have not shown the least interest in returning the favor.

I made a prediction. If you wish to challenge that prediction, the onus is upon you to present me with evidence of my mortality. I will either accept that evidence or reject it. Readers may judge the rationality of each side, based upon our exchanges. Nothing else is relevant. Unless you require me to explain the prediction to you.

Your presence here is wasting everyone's time, including yours

I feel my time here has been far from wasted. If you feel that commenting on my prediction or responding to my posts represents a waste of your time, perhaps you should consider just doing something else. Responding to a different post, for example. If you are being forced to respond to my posts, by someone who may be inside your house watching you, please indicate by blinking one eye.

you might be much happier, I think, engaging in this behavior on another forum where it is more the norm.

What behavior? Making a prediction, then defending it? No, I think the New Year's Prediction thread on this site is as good a place as any. In fact, it's ideal.

Although you may not believe yourself to be a troll, you will almost certainly be regarded as one here.

I'm sorry, I don't speak weasel. Did you say "Although you are apparently not a troll, I'm going to do my best to convince others that you are, and, perhaps, eventually have you banned. Basically because I feel somewhat threatened by your manner of thinking."? If I'm a troll, who, until provoked (as here), sticks to arguing his side of a relevant debate in good faith, what does that make you and others, having made specific posts telling me how I'm not suitable and would be happier elsewhere?

Again, I'm not interested in what you think about me, or in receiving any advice you might have for me. If you don't want to engage me, don't. If nobody engages me, I'll leave. Obviously.

Apart from that, I'm ready and willing to respond in good faith to anyone who makes an originally-phrased argument here against my prediction. I'm not interested in being directed to read the ideas of third parties. I can find my own way to the library.

If I am immortal I am ageless. I may look a certain way, but that is irrelevant. Even if I was born, in the normal human way, I'd still be ageless, and I'd still be immortal. That I took human form for a few years is irrelevant. Unless you can show that no immortals were ever born, in the normal human way, and appeared to age, and even appeared to die (immortals can't really die), your 'evidence' does not constitute evidence.

"100%" can't denote odds. And, being an immortal, I'm not a betting man.

Your link directs to one definition of the word. Whatever interpretation of "evidence" you reasonably use in context (which qualification excludes yours), you won't be able to present me with any for my individual mortality... ever. Note: The challenge is not to provide evidence for my theory, but of my mortality

I think he means nobody will prove to him that he has been killed.

I'm new here. Is there a shorthand code in operation? Or are words rationed? Perhaps you'd like to expand your comment?

I'm not "banking on" anything. So far, I am immortal. As I am immortal, I am not subject to the limitations that mortal humans have been seen to have been subject to until now.

I shall assume that you are human (which I think is virtually certain) and speaking in good faith (which I shall simply assume for the sake of the conversation).<

1. Why wouldn't you just take it as read that I'm speaking in good faith? You've used a lot of words in attempting to paint me as a country bumpkin, not fit to tie your intellectual sandals. That you preface all that with a comment about having to overtly assume my good faith makes me think you're not that sure about the bumpkin thing.

2. You can't just assume I'm human. If that were valid, we could all just assume whatever we wanted here, and claim we had won our arguments.

You say "I don't know if I am human, in the generally accepted sense", but I do not believe you.<

Apart from your beliefs being entirely irrelevant, how is it possible for you to form an opinion about what I claim not to know, that is not entirely founded on your emotion? Since the greatest philosophers have struggled over the ages with the question "Am I?", I don't see how "Am I human?" will likely ever have a cut and dried answer.

These being so, evidence that you will die and not live again, and that you did not exist before you were conceived, lies in such observations as these:

1. The tendency of every human body to stop working within a century and then disintegrate. Not merely the observation that people die, which is as old as there have been people, but the extensive knowledge of how and why they die.<

How many human bodies have you personally witnessed stop working and begin disintegrating, within 100 years? I don't grant that that is a tendency at all. We only have information about those who have died. If we are to examine the chances of my immortality, we must look for those who haven't died. Do you have any relevant input with respect to people who haven't died? If not, does the fact that you, personally, don't, constitute evidence of anything? If not, does the same apply to all other individuals? If so, may we say that there is no reliable evidence that humans all die?

1. The absence of any reliable evidence of survival of the mind in any form thereafter.<

Do you have any reliable evidence for the existence of the mind at ANY time? If so, can you present it to me. That you purportedly think will not convince me. Isn't it true that the existence of mind can only ever be hearsay (and, no, I'm not singling you out here)?

1. The absence of any reliable evidence of existence of that mind before conception.<

Oh! please. What an entirely stupid thing to write. It's fundamental that evidence can't be produced for the non-existence of a thing. What are you going to say "It isn't there, none of us present can experience it, so it can't exist"?

1. The absence of any reliable evidence of a mind existing independently of the physical body; the existence of much reliable evidence to the effect that the mind is a physical process of the brain.<

Again, you have no reliable evidence for the existence of mind (in the form it is widely thought to exist, i.e., one each, inside our bodies somewhere, etc.). For all you know, you're plugged into the Matrix.

Of course, many have argued otherwise. Not merely books, but whole libraries could be collected arguing for the existence of souls independent of the body and their immortality.<

Wow, is that what got your backs up? The idea that I might be trying to prove the existence of God? Is that what all the witch-hunting is about? My other prediction is future formation of an Atheist Inquisition, as Atheism gradually takes the classic form of a religion.

But even if the matter were seriously contendable, that would not alter the existence of the evidence I have given, merely put up other evidence against it.<

I resent your framing the debate (which you, contradictorily, have felt the need to participate in at length) as not seriously contendable. You've given no such evidence. Everything you've said relies on the definite prior existence of things as yet not proven to exist, and the definite non-existence of certain other things. Your arguments then, are entirely untenable.

So there is the evidence that you asked for. I am of course only summarising things here. But what else is possible? If someone who knows no mathematics at all starts babbling to me about the 4-colour theorem, what can I do but advise them to study mathematics for a few years?<

"If someone who knows no mathematics at all starts babbling to me about the 4-colour theorem..." Do you ever even think a little bit before you type something? Or do you just copy and paste from your Bumper Book of Insults for Use by the Pompous?

That being said, however, you might indeed be immortal!<

That's not being argued. The challenge is for you to present me with evidence of my mortality. So far, you've listed a lot of irrelevancies about what you personally believe about "human beings". All your evidence stands or falls on a) human beings all having died in the past (which, of course we KNOW they haven't, or we wouldn't be having this conversation), b) all human beings being conventional, and c) my being a conventional human being too. For it to carry any weight at all (and I suspect it wouldn't ever), you'd first have to prove that there is only one kind of human being, that those human beings all die (and have all died, say, within 200 years of being born), and that I am a human being (and not just in one physical shape and form either, but entirely).

Had you been born two centuries ago, you would certainly be dead today, drowned in the river of time.<

Certainly? Does that word have a special meaning here I don't know about? Can you list any other certainties? If you can make the list long enough, we can dispense with any further musing here. For my part, I know of nothing that is certain. Of course, I'm only a humble child amongst knowledgeable adults here.

The challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to stay alive long enough to benefit from medical advances that will enable you to swim upstream, and perhaps even overtake the current. That is the only route to immortality there is...<

Are you the Omnipotent One they said we should seek out? You could be in the running for Atheist Pope one day.

"I'm taking the time to construct original arguments here."

You are not. You began with a bare demand for evidence of your mortality. (Why? Why that question, and why here?) When you didn't like the answers, you demanded more loudly, then threw a tantrum.<

I didn't. I began by making a prediction on a prediction thread. I didn't ask for responses. I was then challenged on that prediction and have since defended it. Can we say in light of that, that your "Why that question, and why here?" question is silly (or is it something someone in a synod of atheists is bound to ask)? When I didn't "like" the answers, I showed how they were inadequate. My responses never got "louder". That you think they did, probably has more to do with faulty wiring in your brain, and perhaps your own tendency to try to shout people down. Have your speakers checked. And I didn't throw a tantrum. I merely questioned the rationale of corrupting the voting system by using it to put down supposed "heresy". To censor. To maintain group integrity. To encourage Groupthink.

"Mommy, the geeks won't let me sit at their table!"

You intended that ironically, but it exactly describes your situation: a child who has wandered into a conversation among adults and understands nothing.<

I understand that you are a pompous windbag who can't form a coherent thought, due to his brain being fogged by a fantastic hubris. Was that "3. The absence of any reliable evidence of existence of that mind before conception." part of the adult conversation? What about ""If someone who knows no mathematics at all starts babbling to me about the 4-colour theorem..."? I may be a child, but those statements seem stupid to me.

My statement re "the geeks table" had more to do with the sad reality that complete censorship and ideas control is more assured here than at any Medieval synod.

You do not even understand that there is something for you to understand.<

Oh well, that settles it. You win. You now move on to the quarter-final round against the guy who thinks he's Napoleon at Bedlam Hospital. It should be a cracker!

But the remedy is easy: read every post linked to here. It's about the size of a book. Post nothing until you have finished. If you understand what you read there -- not agree with, but understand -- then there will be enough of a common background to have a useful conversation.<

Groupthink gone wild. "Will you confess your heresy, and bow down and kiss the ringI If you do, all this torture will stop." I don't have to read and regurgitate other people's ideas. My brain makes its own ideas. Ideas, apparently, that encourage you to respond in long diatribes. Do you mean you'd write MORE if I first read the articles before posting again? Please feel free not to respond at all.

No, I have no evidence for your mortality. Although it's possible that I could someday have such evidence (based on the generally-accepted definition of mortality), I could never be in a position to present YOU with any.

My underlying interest in this theme lies in the direction of why we blindly accept our own mortality on such little individually-beheld evidence. Is it possible that, as with increasing average human lifespan, dying has more to do with belief about dying than with any physiological limitations? Accidents and murder, etc., apart, could we believe ourselves to 200 years old, if we could shake off the ingrained belief in the inevitability of death? Could avoidance of news reports involving death help? Are we really to believe that gains in average human lifespan are solely due to improvements in factors external to the body? If so, why is that many remote, relatively under-developed areas produce so many centenarians? Does belief that it's easily achievable to live to, say, 90 years have nothing to do with individually achieving such longevity? And does "genetics" have more to do with monkey see, monkey do than we imagine?

Note: In 1900, global average lifespan was 31 years. By mid century, it was 48 years. In 2005, it was 65.6 years. http://www.who.int/global_health_histories/seminars/presentation07.pdf

I would really rather bet against you. Let's select a suitable arbitrator and translate that probability into some (finite) odds.

Say, hypothetically, that every living relative of yours out to fourth cousin is captured and brought before you. They are then, every man woman and child, beaten to death with a rubber chicken. The assailant then begins to beat you with the aforementioned toy and you exhibit similar symptoms of physical decay to your previously bludgeoned kin. No unbiased arbitrator would judge that no legitimate evidence for your individual mortality has been presented to you. Short of non-occamian priors the evidence is clear.