New Year's Prediction Thread (2013)

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Feel free to use http://predictionbook.com/happenstance ; for quick gratification, make predictions using http://predictionbook.com/predictions/future (My own prediction are all at http://predictionbook.com/users/gwern )

2 large collections of predictions for those interested in the specific topics:

• Methods of Rationality
• Neon Genesis Evangelion

On the benefits of predicting, and heuristics/tips/advice: http://www.gwern.net/Prediction%20markets#predictionbook-nights

While we're on the topic: today I closed up a batch of predictions on the success of the 2012 Haskell Summer of Code projects: http://www.gwern.net/Haskell%20Summer%20of%20Code#results-2 I didn't do very well, since I got bushwhacked by 2 hard-to-predict failures and a disappointment from someone I didn't expect to disappoint me.

Assuming that Google hired Ray Kurzweil to produce and not just for bragging rights, I predict that Kurzweil and Google will part company some time this year when it becomes evident that Kurzweil can no longer focus on doing real engineering.

I predict that the comet ISON will be barely visible and not at all the most spectacular comet in history, as the current hype goes.

Here is a list of my New Year's resolutions (along with probability estimates). Peer pressure, lend me your power!

As usual, a mostly exhaustive list of my public predictions can be found here.

We should also use this thread to rate our own predictions from last year. Here are mine:

Methods of Rationality updates - will there be any?

Yes. But not enough to make it feel like the story is moving towards a conclusion.

I'm not sure how to score this one. The trial arc had big changes to the status quo that make me think the story must revolve soon. Quirrell is on Harry's list of suspects for the frame-up, Harry now sees himself as being at war. Also, Draco is gone, and Eliezer had so much fun with the Draco-Harry dynamic that I doubt Eliezer would have gotten rid of Draco unless the fic were nearing its end. I made these inferences before, and had them confirmed by, the November status update.

At the same time, it's very hard for me to see how the story could possibly resolve. I'm sure Eliezer will give Harry a way to win, but what way could that possibly be? Harry figuring out who Quirrell is could happen very easily, and from there it's not a big leap to make some informed guesses about horcrux locations. But there's the general problem of Rational!Voldemort being too smart to be defeated any of the ways he's defeated in canon, and more specific things getting in the way of a resolution, like how on earth will Harry actually destroy the horcruxes, even if he knew where they all are?

[Medical advances] will be incremental, enough so that very, very few people will notice any practical impact on their lives. Some advances, however, will be accompanied by a great deal of hype. Evidence will emerge that some treatments which we think work now do not in fact work.

Haven't taken a poll, but I've heard no news reports contracting the first sentence. Unfortunately, I can't think of any super hyped-up news reports to confirm the rest of the prediction. It wouldn't surprise me if the third sentence were true and I just haven't heard about it--can anyone help me there?

I will continue to believe cryonics is something I would sign up for if I had money to spare, but will also continue to feel too poor to have money to spare.

This was correct.

I expect to be amazed by at least one cool new application of computing that vaguely resembles human intelligence.

I found out about the Google Goggles app, and was impressed on first hearing about it, though less impressed on actually trying it. Does this count? I had "something Siri-like" in mind when I made this prediction, and still haven't tried Siri, so I don't know if I'd be disappointed by Siri.

General comment: my predictions were made only semi-jokingly, as an attempt to find things so banal they could not fail. But I think I may have gone overboard applying the heuristic "2012 will be a lot like 2011." 2012 didn't differ dramatically from 2011, but I underestimated the number of boring ways it would differ.

By the end of 2014 the average observer in a city with a population over 300,000 in the United States will see a drone aircraft in the sky once a month or more. By 2017, every day.