Peering into the Future

I find it amusing to find people predicting the future. Most people simply do a linear extrapolation. More sophisticated people, like Ray Kurzweil (author of The Singularity is Near) argue that innovation is increasing at an exponential rate so any linear extrapolation falls far short of reality. (Funny thing, most ordinary predictions -- at least to my estimate -- don't fall short but over-estimate the future. Where they fall short is "seeing" the unexpected discoveries.)

Here is a posting on BoingBoing by Mark Frauenfelder that discusses a new wager by scientists predicting the future:

Professor Lewis Wolpert and Dr Rupert Sheldrake, have set up a wager on the predictive value of the genome.

The wager will be decided on May 1, 2029, and if the outcome is not obvious, the Royal Society, the world's most venerable scientific organization, will be asked to adjudicate. The winner will receive a case of fine port, Quinta do Vesuvio, 2005, which should have reached perfect maturity by 2029 and is being stored in the cellars of The Wine Society.

Prof Wolpert bets that the following will happen. Dr Sheldrake bets it will not: By May 1, 2029, given the genome of a fertilized egg of an animal or plant, we will be able to predict in at least one case all the details of the organism that develops from it, including any abnormalities.
Prof Wolpert and Dr Sheldrake agree that at present, given the genome of an egg, no one can predict the way an embryo will develop. The wager arose from a debate on the nature of life between Wolpert and Sheldrake at the 2009 Cambridge University Science Festival.

Prof Wolpert believes that all biological phenomena can in principle be explained in terms of DNA, proteins and other molecules, together with their interactions. He is convinced that it is only a matter of time before all the details of an organism can be predicted on the basis of the genome.

Dr Sheldrake believes that the predictive value of genes is grossly over-rated. Genes enable organisms make proteins, but they do not contain programs or blueprints. Instead, he thinks that the development of organisms depends on organizing fields called morphogenetic fields, which are not inherited through the genes.

I find several things that are odd about this "bet":

• Wolpert was born in 1929, to live to 2029 to "win" this bet he would have to be 100. The odds of that are very low (unless he is also "predicting" that lifespans will be dramatically increased in the future, but lifespans from 1800 to 2060 were dramatically increased by avoiding early deaths, not by extending the age of death).


• The nature/nurture debate was settled long ago as far as I can tell. Sure the genes are the blueprint, but just like you will get different results if you hand the blueprint to a skilled craftsman versus a raw apprentice versus a complete novice, genes under different environments will create different results. The raging new field of epigenetics shows how the central dogma of molecular biology (that DNA -> RNA -> protein) is not true, i.e. the environment can control into gene expression.

The post by Frauenfelder is interesting because he mentions a number of other famous scientific bets and their results:

• Richard Feynman's bet of$1000 that no-one could construct a motor no bigger than 1/64 of an inch on a side. He lost.


• Stephen Hawking bet fellow cosmologist Kip Thorne that Cygnus X-1 would turn out not to be a black hole (Hawking lost).


• In 1980 biologist Paul Erlich bet economist Julian Simon that the price of five mineral commodities would rise over the next ten years. In fact they fell.

So the track record of scientists in predicting the future is pretty dismal.

I would add that Ray Kurzweil is "betting" that he can live long enough that the science of life extension will advance fast enough to keep death in his future and he will in effect live forever. I believe he will lose this bet. But there are new scientific developments which may prove that my jaded outlook is wrong. Resveritrol seems very promising to provide significant life extension. Maybe for a middle aged guy like Kurzweil (now 61 years old) this will be just enough to allow him to hang in there until the next big advance in life extension will arrive to keep that appointment with the Grim Reaper indefinitely postponed.

And I need to add one other note: While I back Rupert Sheldrake in this "bet", I find him to be a fraud. Over twenty years ago I read his book The Presence of the Past about "morphic resonance" and found it to be pure quackery. At that time he presented himself as a bio-chemist studying plants. He has now gone over to the dark side as a researcher in "parasychology", pure nonsense.