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Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

First: Those weren't the words of the bet, per the article. The actual words of the measure of collapse, per the article were:

> an economic disaster that would render the dollar worthless, causing a depression worse than the one in 1930; a rebellion of the poor against the monied; and a significant number of environmental catastrophes.

Now, you sound like you have a source other than the article, and the article sounds like it might be a paraphrase. But it's kind of hard for me to judge without knowing what your source is.

But, using the wording from the article: Were we close to the first of those in 2008? When Lehman collapsed, if there hadn't been intervention the dominoes would have continued to fall. How far would they have continued to fall? Hard to tell now, but at the time it looked like they were just going to keep falling...

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>Those weren't the words of the bet,

Yes, they were the words of the bet.

https://www.wired.com/1995/06/saleskelly/

I don't know if this changes anything but I think the actual bet is described by the line

>I bet you US$1,000 that in the year 2020, we're not even close to the kind of disaster you describe—a convergence of three disasters: global currency collapse, significant warfare between rich and poor, and environmental disasters of some significant size. We won't even be close. I'll bet on my optimism.

It seems like in the actual terms of the bet Kelly paraphrases Sale. That is how I would read it sans an actual signed legal document. But then again I'm not a lawyer or anyone versed in gambling etiquette and protocol.

> I bet you US$1,000 that in the year 2020, we're not even close to...a global currency collapse

Why would anyone take this bet? If you're right, then $1000 USD probably won't be worth very much after the "global currency collapse", so you'd basically be saying "I'll give you $1000 in 2020 if it's worth anything"

Good point. I would guess, since it's all moot from the perspective of the person making those predictions, the whole exercise is just a theatric flourish, meant to communicate in a more or less performative way.

The other (perfectly plausible) answer is that the part of one's brain that believes the claim, and the part of ones' brain that believes in the power of bets and value of money that make bets interesting, are brain regions that haven't reconciled with one another.

To Kevin Kelly, today, $1000 is barely worth anything anyway. So he also stands to gain nothing. (And, indeed, he didn't even want the money, but asked for it to be sent to charity.)

So ask yourself the question again. Why would two public intellectuals make a public bet, when neither stands to gain any monetary benefit from it? My goodness, it's a mystery.

Sale says (1) all of Africa south of the Sahara will be uninhabitable, and Kelly paraphrases that as (2) "environmental disasters of some significant size".

It would seem to be against the spirit and intention of the bet, in any plausible reading, to grant Sale a win on the grounds that (2) comes true but not (1), when (1) was attempting to paraphrase (2).

How can there even be ‘significant warfare between rich and poor’? Some kind of communist revolution? By definition the poor don’t have the resources to significantly attack the rich.

I don't think that is true. You can have strength in numbers and mass violence is very difficult to stop without outright killing the perpetrators.

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