Although Sam would have lost this bet, I respect that he had the courage to make a forecast with a specific number and a specific future date.

Too many pundits make grand but imprecise predictions like "AI will become dominant in the next decade". The book 'Superforcasting' tackles this problem in detail: https://www.amazon.com/Superforecasting-Science-Prediction-P...

Castro's poor judgement led directly to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Afterwards John F Kennedy estimated there was between a one-third and one-half chance that it would have escalated to nuclear war [1]. That seems like an underestimate considering that we now know some of the missiles were fully operational [2]

Yet today it's difficult for most people to appreciate the extreme threat and terror of nuclear weapons in the 1960's. Half of US voters think life was better then than now [3]. Really? To me, there's no level of job security that could possibly compensate for such a high chance of nuclear catastrophe.

[1] Reported in https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RKO6MS8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

[2] As described by Robert McNamara in 'The Fog of War'

[3] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/20/6-charts-tha...

There have been several editions of the Global Trends reports, all interesting both for what they got right and what they got wrong. Please note that the reports are not "predictions" but "forecasts". The methodology tries to identify trends and drivers that are thought to be significant in the evolving future. For a few of them, scenarios are created to explore how different interacting trends and drivers might create a future.

HN readers interested in learning more about forecasting might read Philip Tetlock's book, Superforecasting, http://www.amazon.com/Superforecasting-The-Art-Science-Predi..., which has been justifiably on many must read lists.

For anyone who is interested in this topic, Dr. Tetlock just released a new book about it (http://www.amazon.com/Superforecasting-The-Art-Science-Predi...).

We're also hosting a public forecasting tournament for him and his team that focuses on geo-political forecasting: https://www.gjopen.com/