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It would have happened over a decade earlier if the DotCon bubble burst hadn't replaced most of the old guard in Silicon Valley with H-1b's from India trained in Java.

Wrong. The free market is only good at doing research that immediately or near-immediately enhances someoneâ(TM)s income.

You are already wrong. Flawed premise leads to flawed conclusions.

Who are you to judge what is useful and what is not?

I'm pretty good at that actually. The market is pretty much dead now, but I am the top scorer on the Foresight Exchange which was a prediction betting market that ran since 1996. I would certainly test my acumen against any scientist spouting the "you can't judge research" myth. It'd be easy money.

But who wanted to spend money on someone studying Maxwellâ(TM)s Equations? Or on comparing Indo-European languages? Those donâ(TM)t pay off at all, unless you just want to get your name on a university endowment.

Maxwell's equations had a large near future payoff, kicking off such things as radio and electronic analog computers. And comparing Indo-European languages? No more reason exists for public funding than private. But someone would find it interesting and fund it just like they do studies of history. Even the researchers themselves could do that.

Who wanted to blow cash on phlogistons or the aether when you could fund some dudeâ(TM)s new flavour of steam engine and double your money a year later? Yet without those phlogistons and aether we wouldnâ(TM)t have atomic physics and semiconductors.

Because they wanted to be on the next big thing.

I see the same empty-headed reasoning used. You haven't even considered if the examples you use actually support your argument.

If trading funny money and a bare-bones web interface is OK, there is Foresight Exchange (aka Ideosphere) which has worked almost flawlessly since 1994.
http://www.ideosphere.com/

Last time I did that, I had some idiot, funnily enough another nuclear power antagonist, insult me for a few replies. Let me say that I have credentials as does most anyone, but that they are irrelevant aside from indicating some degree of technical and scientific aptitude, which isn't at issue here. As to experience with risk rather than just credentials, I have worked on high altitude. unmanned balloon-based aerospace projects which involve some risk management (in the traditional sense of first, second, and third party risk to self, customers, and innocents), studied disaster recovery efforts (as well as the public response to them), and have long engaged in trading on betting markets for forecasting purposes (particularly, the Foresight Exchange among which I remain the second highest player).

From the FX claim Sorb currently trading at a 10% chance of coming true:

Suborbital transportation will exceed high-mach air transportation by the year 2020. "Suborbital" means any high-mach, non-orbital flight where the majority of the distance is covered without benefit of locally available gasses as the primary propulsion reaction mass. "High-mach" means the majority of the distance is covered at a speed of mach 2.5 or greater. "Non-orbital" means the total flight path distance is less than the circumfrence of the earth. "Locally available" excludes gasses that have been stored within the vehicle for more than 3 minutes. The metric for comparison will include passenger, luggage and cargo ton-miles over the entirety of the year 2020 as published in standard industry surveys.

There's no smoking gun, that is, some direct evidence of these organisms. And frankly, I don't find the current claim of relatively pure magnetite to be compelling. This is part of why I've bet against the discovery of alien life by 2050 since 1996.

Ideosphere/Foresight Exchange and Intrade are much more interesting. Both market "real world" events instead of hollywood flakes.

Ideosphere/Foresight is free, intrade is real dollars.

Ideosphere is semi-comatose, and the email list is currently filled with a debate over what exactly "astrology is true" means, which is at least somewhat more interesting than the past six months debating if an ipod touch/iphone is a real computer or not.

Intrade, last time I checked, is very much alive. Once I feel I know what I'm doing with monopoly money on ideosphere, I have been planning on moving to intrade and investing real money. At my present rate of learning, which only exceeds my weight loss program for failure to progress, I'll be moving to intrade right around the year 2100.

http://www.ideosphere.com/

http://www.intrade.com/

Both have been around for "forever" on the internet. The only new thing about HSX is that its securities are based on the actions of hollywood drug addicts, thus inherently unpredictable, whereas you can gain an advantage by trading intelligently on ideosphere and intrade. HSX is pure gambling, intrade is investing or at least intelligent speculation. Two inherently different activities.

Bankrupt in 3 years.

This might make a claim for Ideosphere.

Cordially,
K. Trout

One was even Cheneys little betting scheme, Predictive Markets.

What do you think the probability that the courts might make a crazy judgement would be?

If you compare the foresight exchange claims T2007 and SCOLIN, you get the idea that it's more likely that IBM will beat SCO than it is that we would ever see 2007. Despite the latter probably depended on the former. It's probably more likely that "Novell would beat SCO" than "the sun will rise tomorrow" by that measurement
No idea about your other questions

There is also Foresight Exchange.

Just a reminder, as posted in many many slashdot posts before (see http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Aslashd ot.org+ideosphere), the http://ideosphere.com/ site has been running a (non monetary) experiment in freemarket intelligence for a long time. The more players the more fun (and better information extractable from the market). Go play. -math

http://www.ideosphere.com/fx-bin/Claim?claim=ITJOB S

The above link is a futures exchange (where you bet only your reputation) on the future of ITJOBS in the US. You can compare articles like this to the consensus in that market. The market above includes a measure of whether or not the jobs we will still have in the future are well paying jobs or not. The current market consensus opinion is pretty rosy.

Ok, Robin Hanson's home page is here, but it's still down. If I recall correctly, you have to click through to his personal page and then there's some betting markets related stuff. The PAM (Policy Analysis Market) stuff should be around there.

Yes, you said that limiting the supply of options in the options market eliminated *most* of the illegal activities. Which is probably a fair trade off when the commodity is oranges or shares in SCO.

But not so when it's airlines and reinsurance companies?

Reading through the link that I gave on the previous post, I see that each trader starts with $100. So there turns out to be very little money actually riding on terrorist attacks, assuming they were tossed in to that market.

Sorry, I didn't explain that very well. By usng money to manipulat the market, it would be possible to create financial incentives to perform acts of violence. The sponsor would lose money on the deal, of course, but might regard the loss as acceptable is the violent act achieved the desired outcome. So while they wouldn't be buying violence, and therefore not legally liable, it might still be possible to spend money in order to achieve violence, giving the same functional outcome.

Again if the amounts are limited, then you don't have enough in one place to provide an incentive. It's pretty obvious that if there's a billion dollar bet riding on whether a particular act of crime occurs, then there's a massive incentive to make that act happen. So by limiting the market, you remove that incentive. The amounts in the regular stock options markets are large enough that there still remains various incentives. But you can reduce the size of the "terrorism" market so that that isn't the case.

Ok, Robin Hanson's home page is here, but it's still down. If I recall correctly, you have to click through to his personal page and then there's some betting markets related stuff. The PAM (Policy Analysis Market) stuff should be around there.

Yes, you said that limiting the supply of options in the options market eliminated *most* of the illegal activities. Which is probably a fair trade off when the commodity is oranges or shares in SCO.

But not so when it's airlines and reinsurance companies?

Reading through the link that I gave on the previous post, I see that each trader starts with $100. So there turns out to be very little money actually riding on terrorist attacks, assuming they were tossed in to that market.

Sorry, I didn't explain that very well. By usng money to manipulat the market, it would be possible to create financial incentives to perform acts of violence. The sponsor would lose money on the deal, of course, but might regard the loss as acceptable is the violent act achieved the desired outcome. So while they wouldn't be buying violence, and therefore not legally liable, it might still be possible to spend money in order to achieve violence, giving the same functional outcome.

Again if the amounts are limited, then you don't have enough in one place to provide an incentive. It's pretty obvious that if there's a billion dollar bet riding on whether a particular act of crime occurs, then there's a massive incentive to make that act happen. So by limiting the market, you remove that incentive. The amounts in the regular stock options markets are large enough that there still remains various incentives. But you can reduce the size of the "terrorism" market so that that isn't the case.

I find it funny that companies that are paid big money to forecast the future are so often wrong.

However, there are virtual stock markets where people predict the future in regards to news, sports, movies, etc. More often than not, these are correct.

http://www.ideosphere.com/
http://www.hsx.com/
http://blogshares.com/
http://us.newsfutures.com/

I'm happy to finally see a slashdot story on prediction markets, like the one described in the article, as they're one of the neatest new concepts I've come across. They've shown themselves to be on average the most accurate way to predict future events, more accurate than, say, individual experts or opinion polls. Having people "put their money where their mouth is" greatly improves the quality of predictions.

If you've never seen a prediction market in action before, I highly recommend checking out the real-money Intrade market, or the virtual-money Foresight Exchange. At such markets you can get estimated probabities for almost any major event. Here's a few examples from Intrade:

* Sony Playstation 3 release before October 6: 33% chance
* Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic Presidential Nominee in 2008: 43.1%
* John McCain to be the Republican Presidential Nominee in 2008: 36.6%
* Osama Bin Laden to be captured/neutralised by 30 June 2006: 5.7%
* Donald Rumsfeld to announce his resignation on/before 31Dec2006: 18.5%
* Bird flu (H5N1) to be confirmed in the USA ON/BEFORE 31st December 2006: 70.0%

That said, I think the company described in the article can probably improve the way they handle their pay-offs. From the article:

At Rite-Solutions, the architecture of participation is both businesslike and playful. Fifty-five stocks are listed on the company's internal market, which is called Mutual Fun. Each stock comes with a detailed description -- called an expect-us, as opposed to a prospectus -- and begins trading at a price of $10. Every employee gets $10,000 in "opinion money" to allocate among the offerings, and employees signal their enthusiasm by investing in a stock and, better yet, volunteering to work on the project. Volunteers share in the proceeds, in the form of real money, if the stock becomes a product or delivers savings.

The wording in the article is a little ambiguous, but it seems that if you choose to bid on an idea which you "know" is good, and would be if it were selected as a product, if other people don't agree you lose your money. It would be better to have a system where if the stock isn't selected as a product, you get your money back. If the product is selected, you gain money if the product does well, and lose money if the product does poorly. This also adds an incentive for people to "short" popular ideas that they think are going to perform poorly.

http://www.ideosphere.com/

It is great, but somewhat sluggish, since you are betting on events years in the future.

The market you are referring to is called the Foresight Exchange and is located here (originally launched in 1995). I work for the company that develops the software and we did not develop the Rite-Solutions market. However, we are working with GE, Siemens and others to do the same type of collective forecasting and decision making. More info can be found here.

Ok, I'm hearing so much about what Google is going to do or not do. I'm going to throw together a few betting contracts (using play money) for various Google claims (I use the Foresight Exchange for this sort of thing). So far, I'm hearing two definite predictions. First, that there's some sort of Google-branded linux distribution in the very near future. Second, that Google completes a common desktop which can be accessed via web browser or future version of Google desktop (will have to determine some mechanism for when something will be considered a "future version", these sorts of details can trip up a claim).

Google will come up with GoogleRate, a neat application that will automatically search for, record, archive, and then verify all these claims and predictions that everyone makes.

You're probably joking, but back in September Google mentioned that they've set up a prediction market system to use within their company, for the purpose of forecasting things like product launch dates and "many other things of strategic importance". I wouldn't be surprised if this is a lead-in to creating a publically-open prediction market for more general events, sort of like the Foresight Exchange, Yahoo's Buzz Game, or TradeSports.

Of course, they'd probably add some sort of Google-specific twist to it, such as forecasting the number of news reports or blog write-ups on a particular keyword (i.e. its "importance" or "impact"), or the future PageRank of a particular site. They probably couldn't legally use real money directly, so perhaps they'd raffle prizes based on earnings, sort of like Yahoo's done.

I should probably add the disclaimer that I have a bit of an obsession with prediction markets. They're statistically the best way to predict the future, better than either opinion polls or individual experts.

in 1999 I predicted Javascript employment would beat Java employment by 2003 but I didn't count on the third world paper mills being pushed so hard to churn out Java programmers sucker punching buzzword compliant CTOs. Sun's perversion probably cost the world economy a trillion dollars but things seem to finally be turning around.

Where were the digerati futurists on this?

The Real Climate website looks like a good pick. Sophisticated treatment of the research, though I notice some bias since one side of the comments gets debated heavily while another (equally unclued IMHO) side does not. Still not bad given what's out there. Thank you for directing me to that.

Finally, on your long ago comment:

If you look back over the last 30yrs or so at reports such as from the IPCC and many other credible publications before it, you will find a plethora of predictions. Many of these predictions have already been verified by observation, unfortunately they have occured much sooner than the scientific establishment thought they would.

Could you drop a reference or link here? What has been predicted? Fortunately, I don't have a big list of "SPAM" references that I ignore from the start so this should be quite easy.

Current estimates suggest that a space elevator will be deployed in 2045 or so. I lunar elevator could be done much sooner-and would have immediate practical value.

If the Chinese go to the moon, I don't think it will be just a publicity stunt-I expect they'll develop a real economic presence there. Stuff like a Lunar space elevator could be a highly profitable enterprise.

This may be what is needed to show just how short-sighted the folks running the US these days really are.

If the Chinese go to the moon, I don't think it will be just a publicity stunt-I expect they'll develop a real economic presence there. Stuff like a Lunar space elevator could be a highly profitable enterprise.

This may be what is needed to show just how short-sighted the folks running the US these days really are.

http://www.ideosphere.com/

We have many players and you can have a lot of fun trying to beat the market. These markets don't always get things correct though... The market bet a 20% chance that Gas would hit $3 per gallon in the US. I always thought the chance of that to be far higher.

Hence, these markets don't always predict things as well as people suspect. If the majority is wrong, the market will have a bias. Some have given guessing ox weight as proof of the market's efficiency. But if the ox was made of rubber foam, everyone's guess would be incorrect. Markets, like people, can be wrong.

Not sure about Perpetual Motion & Duke Nukem Forever, but
Fusion Power
Space Elevator
Microsoft Linux ...oh come on. That'll never happen. It's far more likely that SCO will beat IBM than that ever happening.

Not sure about Perpetual Motion & Duke Nukem Forever, but
Fusion Power
Space Elevator
Microsoft Linux ...oh come on. That'll never happen. It's far more likely that SCO will beat IBM than that ever happening.

Not sure about Perpetual Motion & Duke Nukem Forever, but
Fusion Power
Space Elevator
Microsoft Linux ...oh come on. That'll never happen. It's far more likely that SCO will beat IBM than that ever happening.

Not sure about Perpetual Motion & Duke Nukem Forever, but
Fusion Power
Space Elevator
Microsoft Linux ...oh come on. That'll never happen. It's far more likely that SCO will beat IBM than that ever happening.

http://www.ideosphere.com/fx-bin/Claim?claim=ITJOB S You can bet your reputation on this question at the above link--a game where you can speculate on future outcomes. This market is currently predicting a fairly good long-term for the US software market, the market currently trades at a value that says it is 70% likely that there will be 35% more IT jobs in the US in 2012 over 2002.

A poster to the extropy-chat mailing list pointed out that James Annan also created a global warming claim on the Foresight Exchange that people can bid on:

http://www.ideosphere.com/fx-bin/Claim?claim=GW203 0

If I'm reading the current bid correctly, global average temperatures are predicted to rise 0.72 degrees celsius by 2032.

There's also a Nature news item covering this.

A poster to the extropy-chat mailing list pointed out that James Annan also created a global warming claim on the Foresight Exchange that people can bid on:

http://www.ideosphere.com/fx-bin/Claim?claim=GW203 0

If I'm reading the current bid correctly, global average temperatures are predicted to rise 0.72 degrees celsius by 2032.

There's also a Nature news item covering this.

What would I do here? Well, on the Foresight Exhchange we've had some experimental financial instruments that deal with ecological issues-we need more of those and some real money items might force the issue on Wall Street. Ideally, I'd like to see the "game" on Foresight Exchange greatly improved-to the point a lot more folks would be involved and the game would have enough statistical support behind it to become influential in policy decisions-and take a lot of arguments beyond sheer emotion.

I wonder why guys like Cringley never put their predictions up on Idea Futures Exchange? Maybe its because their predictions aren't that surprising?

There's a futures market that examines some of these issues: ITJOBS

Check out ideosphere.

These are market based odds.

I always though that the "proper" way to do this is to make people to bet for/against the event, odds are calculated as the ratio of $$ in those two pots. Then bookie loses nothing (and always gets his fee from both winners and losers).

Gee, sounds like a futures market to me... and I just discovered this site which does just that, but without using real money. There's a huge amount of stuff to bet on, including some of the things the mentioned in the NewScientist article. If games like this get popular enough, how long before people are playing for keeps, like at HSX?

I always though that the "proper" way to do this is to make people to bet for/against the event, odds are calculated as the ratio of $$ in those two pots. Then bookie loses nothing (and always gets his fee from both winners and losers).

Gee, sounds like a futures market to me... and I just discovered this site which does just that, but without using real money. There's a huge amount of stuff to bet on, including some of the things the mentioned in the NewScientist article. If games like this get popular enough, how long before people are playing for keeps, like at HSX?

Going a little more on-topic, does anyone remember which UK bookmakers took a £50 bet from a punter in 1963 or so on a Moon landing by 1970? Odds of 1000-1 or so, IIRC. And they paid out!

Sawyer is head and shoulders above the bulk of scifi authors in taking on predictions that will or will not come true within his lifetime. But he could even be head and shoulders above so called "futurists" who can't be bothered even to register their opinions on longbets and foresight exchange -- of course, that's if Sawyer actually does so.

My favorite current forcasting site is Ideosphere.com. The problem with science fiction is that they've generally got out of dealing with plausible future scenarios at all. Personally, I think we need more good "what if" type fiction. Also, we need to look at the future more as a probabilistic thing-which Ideosphere encourages.

Just last night I was browsing the Foresight Exchange, one of the oldest trading floors for betting fake money on real world events. They've nothing related to Google right now, but you can speculate on claims from the year of the first human Mars landing to the likelihood of fangs and tails becoming fashionable body modifications by 2010.

Just last night I was browsing the Foresight Exchange, one of the oldest trading floors for betting fake money on real world events. They've nothing related to Google right now, but you can speculate on claims from the year of the first human Mars landing to the likelihood of fangs and tails becoming fashionable body modifications by 2010.

Future of IT Jobs in America

And if you don't mind a little neo-liberal dig here, the unrestrained market is a superior rational process to the scientific method for estimating likelihood of events occuring. Especially events which involve a great deal of uncertainty, divergence of opinion, and emotion.

Having said that, Mr. Shostak is boldly taking a stand by stating any sort of probability at all and I approve of it. It's very possible that this new information will change singificantly the odds on the Foresight Exchange as the traders digest it.

And if you don't mind a little neo-liberal dig here, the unrestrained market is a superior rational process to the scientific method for estimating likelihood of events occuring. Especially events which involve a great deal of uncertainty, divergence of opinion, and emotion.

Having said that, Mr. Shostak is boldly taking a stand by stating any sort of probability at all and I approve of it. It's very possible that this new information will change singificantly the odds on the Foresight Exchange as the traders digest it.

It's a futures market where you can buy/sell the future of IT with play money. There are other claims you can buy and sell as well. The market is currently trading above 0.5 for IT jobs so that means people are expecting job growth.