monkeypizza

well, handicaps can be arbitrarily large. so a bot could have beaten a pro with handi even 40 years ago, as long as you make the handi large enough.

recently bots have gotten a lot better at go - they just passed 3dan rank, which is above where most amateurs ever reach. http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=13...

But they still have a ways to go.

Here is a (fake money) future prediction market on whether a bot will beat a pro in an even game by 2020 - running at 20% right now. http://www.ideosphere.com/fx-bin/Claim?claim=GoCh

this looks like the stuff: (taobao link) http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=5777316505

seconding dewdney's planiverse. Also, I loved rudy rucker's spaceland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceland_(novel)

So to summarize, even in an ideal equal world, inequality exists. Just pointing out that the top 20% owns more than the bottom 20% means literally nothing, because even in a totally equal world, that is true.

If you introduce random variation into the performance of the stock market, then the ownership of the top 20% would increase even more!