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Which engineering breakthroughs will achieve widespread commercial and societal integration by 2050? [add responses]

Jun 12, 1:39 PMDec 1, 8:59 PM

28086561

OptionProbability

Therapies to reverse cardiovascular diseases

Gene Editing Therapies

Autonomous Drone Swarms Dominating Land and Air Combat

Personalized medicine based on patient's genetic profile

Regenerative Medicine

Brain-Computer Interfaces

Synthetic Meat Indistinguishable from Real Meat

Heat pumps and solar panels for heating homes

Humanoid Robots in Service/Logistics Roles

Cancer Vaccine Targeting Multiple Types of Cancer

Male pattern baldness treatment that consistently turns Nowood 7 to Norwood 1 (no surgery/grafts)

Solar panels with 40% efficiency

Bioprinting

Therapies to reverse neurodegenerative diseases

Fully Autonomous Cargo Ships

a molecule derived using Alphafold (current or successor models) achieves over $1B of commercial retail sales

Artificial Photosynthesis (10% efficiency in converting sunlight to chemical energy)

viable cloned organs using your own DNA as base (i.e. no autoimmune organ rejection)

Human-level AGI

Solid-state EV batteries ≥ 500 Wh/kg in mass-produced cars

Space-Based Manufacturing

Desalination with Energy Consumption Below 1.5 kWh/m³

Seafloor Mining Robots

Transoceanic fully autonomous container crossing without onboard crew

Non-invasive colon cancer screening that is equally or more effective than a Colonoscopy

Quantum Computing Applications

Graphene semiconductor electronics

ASI

Self-Healing Materials for Infrastructure

Nanorobots for Precision Drug Delivery

Lunar Bases

Moon base

Advanced Exoskeletons for Everyday Use

More than half of all commercial ships built between 2030-2050 have the option to supplement their power burn with wind power (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R6ln7pr5QU)

Major resurgence of lighter than air craft for shipping or consumer travel/leisure

Britain finishes HS2

Direct Cognitive Collaboration

Photonic computing

A Specific ‘Longevity Drug’ or Defined Drug Combination that Extends Average Human Healthspan by at Least 10 Years

Smart Contact Lenses with AR Capabilities

Commercial asteroid mining

Biohybrid Robots with Living Muscle Tissue

Datacenters in space

Hypersonic commercial passenger travel

Sand Batteries (Polar Night Energy) to store energy for months.

Joywire

Commercial fusion power

Room-Temperature Atmospheric-Pressure Superconductors

Artificial Wombs for Human Gestation (from conception to birth)

Fast travel across the globe

AI that produces AAA-level video games via end-user prompts

Medication that adds 30 lbs+ muscle with no major negative health effects

Nuclear powered cargo ships

City-scale fully automated underground logistics networks

Nuclear microreactors that can be used anywhere

Mars Base

Nuclear Thermal Rockets

Point-to-Point Suborbital Spaceflight (Regularly Scheduled Passenger Transport)

Cryonics with Successful Revival

Food with bioengineered saturated fat that doesn't raise cholesterol

Commercial satellite to ground power transmission

Self-Replicating Fully-Automated Factories

Self-Actuating Metamaterials for Adaptive Structures in Buildings and Infrastructure

Human Mind Uploading

Changing the height of an adult at will

Universal Flu Vaccine (effictive against all current and future strains)

Orbital Habitats

Fusion Drives

Cell replacement therapy using synthetic cells

Engineered Symbiotic Microorganism Implants for Human Physiological Augmentation

Space-to-Earth power stations

Space probes travelling at >=1% speed of light

Human sex change at chromosome level

Changing a person's race at will

Von Neumann Probe

A skyhook space structure in LEO

Human Missions to Mars with Round-Trip Travel Time Under 6 Months

Autonomous Flying Cars in Cities

Room-Temperature Superconducting Transmission Lines in Urban Power Grids

Vacuum Airships

Time travel to the future

Commercial cold fusion

Space Elevator

Quantum Sensors Enabling Detection of Cancer Years Before Symptoms

Antimatter bombs

Temporal Cloaking Device (Hiding Events in Time)

Reality Anchoring Device (Stabilizing Subjective Reality)

1% Dyson sphere coverage

Faster then Light Propulsion

Time travel to the past

What proportion of John von Neumann clones aged 20 or older will identify as LGBTQ+?

Jun 18, 1:58 PMJan 2, 4:59 AM

24.58%chance

4965814

OptionVotes

YES

972

970

Greatest Mathematician of all time

Aug 11, 11:37 PMJan 1, 1:00 AM

19131817

OptionProbability

Gauss

Archimedes

Euler

@121

Other

Von Neumann

Alexander Grothendieck

Newton

Kurt Gödel

David Hilbert

Augustin-Louis Cauchy

Pythagoras

Euclid (of Geometry)

Galois (died at 20 fighting for a girl he loved)

Erdos (on amphetamines)

Alonzo Chuch (lambda calculus)

Matt Damon (of Good Will Hunting)

Ramanujan

Poincare

Finkelstein (of the levi finkelstein conjecture)

Mandelbrot (The B in Benoit B Mandelbrot is Benoit B Mandelbrot)

Trick question; there are no mathematicians.

Idk, your mom seemed pretty good at multiplying last night

sixtynine, you filthy casuals

David A. Cox (Cox-Zucker machine)

The solver of the Riemann Hypothesis

Ludwig Wittgenstein

John Conway (group theory, among others)

the unknown ancient egyptian who invented zero

Descartes

Leibniz

Bourbaki

Laplace

@Mira

Georg Cantor

Frank Ramsey

Fermat

Emmy Noether

Ada Lovelace

Terry Tao

DottedCalculator

GPT8

Riemann

Claude Shannon

God

Alan Turing

Grigori Perelman

Olga Ladyzhenskaya

Weyl, Weyl

John Gabriel

Michael Atiyah

Will John von Neumann clones aged 20 or older be more likely to identify as LGBTQ+ than the general population?

Sep 18, 5:57 PMJan 2, 4:59 AM

37.81%chance

152751

OptionVotes

YES

1156

793

Jun 19, 1:14 AMJan 1, 5:00 AM

48.54%chance

7132

OptionVotes

YES

Will "Von Neumann's Fallacy and You" make the top fifty posts in LessWrong's 2025 Annual Review?

Dec 3, 10:19 PMFeb 1, 12:00 AM

13.33%chance

150

OptionVotes

YES

1050

992

Will John von Neumann's grave be exhumed (for his DNA) by EOY 2033?

Dec 25, 10:34 AMJan 1, 7:59 AM

26.81%chance

340

OptionVotes

YES

110

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Which engineering breakthroughs will achieve widespread commercial and societal integration by 2050? [add responses]

What proportion of John von Neumann clones aged 20 or older will identify as LGBTQ+?

Greatest Mathematician of all time

Will John von Neumann clones aged 20 or older be more likely to identify as LGBTQ+ than the general population?

Will Eliezer Yudkowsky win any of these awards or prizes before 2040?

Frontier science theorem discovery fully formalized in proof assistant before 2028?

Will 20 or more clones of John von Neumann exist by 2100?

Cloned historical figure born before 2036

Will we successfully deploy our own Von Neumann probes before we detect foreign Von Neumann probes?

By 2050, will any world leader have advocated for "utilitarian Von Neumann machines"?

Will "Von Neumann's Fallacy and You" make the top fifty posts in LessWrong's 2025 Annual Review?

Will John von Neumann's grave be exhumed (for his DNA) by EOY 2033?

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