I’ve dabbled in studying technological adoption (telegraph, phone, radio, TV, internet etc).
If I had to make this case, I would define parameters as:
What % of people use this medium every day/week/month? A more interesting sub-question would be to compare users of multiple platforms or users that “leapfrog” and use newer platforms without using older ones. For example, many people in developing regions use mobile internet but don’t own PC. Mobile gaming is close to making more annual revenue than console and PC combined. And some crypto apps like Axie Infinity have reported high number of users who do not have a fiat bank account.
What % of people would cite this medium as a means of contacting friends/family/spouses?
What % of people use this medium as primary means of making new friendships/relationships? For example, we’ve recently passed a threshold where 40% of newly married couples met online, which a strong indicator of social habits shifting online.
I’m not in tune with the VR industry, but it’s not the worst bet if you think VR adoption will follow the same rapid growth trajectory as mobile platforms.
Sure. 96% probability that more than 50% of all voice conversation in the OECD will take place in virtual spaces, through VR by the end of 2030.
(Edit: I answered this too quickly. Making beliefs precise is hard.)
I might be able to give a higher number if we could weight conversations by meaning/impact/depth of connection, but I don’t know if I want to have to think about how we’d measure that, or be hooked onto spending a lot of time adjudicating between different survey formats.
Very open to it. It occurs to me now that I know very little about the cultures of many OECD countries: It includes countries that have much stronger food cultures (hard to share meals over VR), weaker media cultures, and larger aged populations, and also the “OECD” might be expanded at some point.
Should we just focus in on the US.
I trust we’ll be able to agree on the rest of the operationalization, or a mediator, and exemptions, when the time comes.
Thinking about this has made me realize how nearterm crypto prediction markets that depend on staking are going to be. If had to stake the money for 8 years I would have just been like “lol no”. But any mechanism I can think of for extracting debts from a person’s ‘main wallet’ after a long time period are basically going to be incompatible with anonymity or possibly even financial privacy or exit rights. I’m not sure that cryptopunk pirate types will ever build such a thing. In the least, the system itself would not have a very cryptopunk or pirate character.
Resolution by “gentleman’s agreement”, e.g., see here: “It is a ″gentleman’s agreement″ where we will attempt to come to consensus between ourselves on the resolution in good faith. In the event of no agreement, we will each donate $100 to charity. Winner: unknown.”
I’m not thinking about having some crypto protocol, I’m thinking about relying on the social layer.
To take this bet, say “book it” and whether you want it to be about OECD countries or just about the US.
Disappointingly, realizing my actual beliefs are softer and broader. When I said “most”, I was thinking “most of the places that I think we should be paying close attention to and operating in (ML research),” but I really must not have wanted to expose and discuss that assumption, probably due to some crappy dynamics that I am getting tired of dancing around...
There might still be a bet we can make, but it would presumably be about the parts of the world that I think are not strategically relevant, it always is, and I would have to study them even more, despite not being authentically interested in them. Would you really make me do that?
My assumption was that most of these categories will continue to depopulate (or host fewer conversations) in response to technological change, and note that the distribution of conversation is already heavily concentrated in bars and parties, and bars aren’t doing so well right now (should I assume we’ll get better covid vaccines by then? But will the bars come back?), and they’ll face extremely intense competition come VR.
I’m hopeful that physical schools will depopulate, but it’s possible that’s where my prediction will fall down, depending on how the myopia stuff turns out, and depending on whether education stuff can develop fast enough.
I think things will return basically to pre-pandemic normals and I’d guess that they mostly have already, although with more remote work.
I think it’s extremely unlikely that daycare, preschool, elementary schools and high schools will have a significant share done virtually.
I could imagine office work and university education going largely virtual, but 2030 seems far too early for most of it with very high probability. Even if we had perfect VR now, I still wouldn’t expect more than half to go virtual by the end of 2030. Things will probably move much more slowly than that.
Occurred to me that this kind of has to assume that more than more than 50% will even own a VR headset by then, which seemed a bit bold, so I decided to check against smartphones ownership statistics. Yeah, smartphones have > 85% adoption. It’ll need to happen faster this time, but I expect it will.
But it doesn’t quite have to assume that, it could also happen as a result of VR tending to play host to a greater proportion of the world’s spoken conversation, per word, that the distribution of conversation will not be even over users and nonusers. Sad as that may be, it’s plausible. It is easier to find people to talk to, online, and the venues are often better.
Would you care to make this precise and give it a specific probability?
I’ve dabbled in studying technological adoption (telegraph, phone, radio, TV, internet etc).
If I had to make this case, I would define parameters as:
What % of people use this medium every day/week/month? A more interesting sub-question would be to compare users of multiple platforms or users that “leapfrog” and use newer platforms without using older ones. For example, many people in developing regions use mobile internet but don’t own PC. Mobile gaming is close to making more annual revenue than console and PC combined. And some crypto apps like Axie Infinity have reported high number of users who do not have a fiat bank account.
What % of people would cite this medium as a means of contacting friends/family/spouses?
What % of people use this medium as primary means of making new friendships/relationships? For example, we’ve recently passed a threshold where 40% of newly married couples met online, which a strong indicator of social habits shifting online.
I’m not in tune with the VR industry, but it’s not the worst bet if you think VR adoption will follow the same rapid growth trajectory as mobile platforms.
Sure. 96% probability that more than 50% of all voice conversation in the OECD will take place in virtual spaces, through VR by the end of 2030.
(Edit: I answered this too quickly. Making beliefs precise is hard.)
I might be able to give a higher number if we could weight conversations by meaning/impact/depth of connection, but I don’t know if I want to have to think about how we’d measure that, or be hooked onto spending a lot of time adjudicating between different survey formats.
I’ll bet against this, my $1k against your $10k, for implied 90% odds.
Very open to it. It occurs to me now that I know very little about the cultures of many OECD countries: It includes countries that have much stronger food cultures (hard to share meals over VR), weaker media cultures, and larger aged populations, and also the “OECD” might be expanded at some point. Should we just focus in on the US.
I trust we’ll be able to agree on the rest of the operationalization, or a mediator, and exemptions, when the time comes.
Thinking about this has made me realize how nearterm crypto prediction markets that depend on staking are going to be. If had to stake the money for 8 years I would have just been like “lol no”. But any mechanism I can think of for extracting debts from a person’s ‘main wallet’ after a long time period are basically going to be incompatible with anonymity or possibly even financial privacy or exit rights. I’m not sure that cryptopunk pirate types will ever build such a thing. In the least, the system itself would not have a very cryptopunk or pirate character.
Operationalization:
I’m indifferent between OECD countries and the US
Resolution by “gentleman’s agreement”, e.g., see here: “It is a ″gentleman’s agreement″ where we will attempt to come to consensus between ourselves on the resolution in good faith. In the event of no agreement, we will each donate $100 to charity. Winner: unknown.”
I’m not thinking about having some crypto protocol, I’m thinking about relying on the social layer.
To take this bet, say “book it” and whether you want it to be about OECD countries or just about the US.
Disappointingly, realizing my actual beliefs are softer and broader. When I said “most”, I was thinking “most of the places that I think we should be paying close attention to and operating in (ML research),” but I really must not have wanted to expose and discuss that assumption, probably due to some crappy dynamics that I am getting tired of dancing around...
There might still be a bet we can make, but it would presumably be about the parts of the world that I think are not strategically relevant, it always is, and I would have to study them even more, despite not being authentically interested in them. Would you really make me do that?
No. As a result, I strongly downvoted the post.
Understandable. I wish I’d put more thought into the title before posting, but I vividly remember having hit some sort of nontrivial stamina limit.
This seems way too high to me. I think you should break things down (more).
Some conversations/breakdowns worth considering:
between people living together (especially family),
at/for school (elementary schools, high schools, trade schools, colleges, universities),
with/between older people, conservatives and those living in rural areas,
between people at jobs that mostly won’t be made remote like trades, restaurants and (probably) retail,
at typical social gatherings (meals, parties, clubs, bars, other outings)
by socioeconomic class
I also expect some inconvenience from actually doing work within VR and switching in just for meetings to be annoying and not very useful.
My assumption was that most of these categories will continue to depopulate (or host fewer conversations) in response to technological change, and note that the distribution of conversation is already heavily concentrated in bars and parties, and bars aren’t doing so well right now (should I assume we’ll get better covid vaccines by then? But will the bars come back?), and they’ll face extremely intense competition come VR.
I’m hopeful that physical schools will depopulate, but it’s possible that’s where my prediction will fall down, depending on how the myopia stuff turns out, and depending on whether education stuff can develop fast enough.
I think things will return basically to pre-pandemic normals and I’d guess that they mostly have already, although with more remote work.
I think it’s extremely unlikely that daycare, preschool, elementary schools and high schools will have a significant share done virtually.
I could imagine office work and university education going largely virtual, but 2030 seems far too early for most of it with very high probability. Even if we had perfect VR now, I still wouldn’t expect more than half to go virtual by the end of 2030. Things will probably move much more slowly than that.
I would be interested in what the market would think on a Metaculus question.
Occurred to me that this kind of has to assume that more than more than 50% will even own a VR headset by then, which seemed a bit bold, so I decided to check against smartphones ownership statistics. Yeah, smartphones have > 85% adoption. It’ll need to happen faster this time, but I expect it will.
But it doesn’t quite have to assume that, it could also happen as a result of VR tending to play host to a greater proportion of the world’s spoken conversation, per word, that the distribution of conversation will not be even over users and nonusers. Sad as that may be, it’s plausible. It is easier to find people to talk to, online, and the venues are often better.