Monday, July 24, 2006

Betting on the Future

People love trying to guess and make predictions about what's gonna happen in the future. Here's a web site that lets you Put Up, or Shut Up.

Longbets.org is the web site of the Long Bets Foundation, which "is a public arena for enjoyably competitive predictions, of interest to society, with philanthropic money at stake."

Let's say you believe that in 2007, "a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times' Web site."

What you'd do is log on at longbets.org and place a $1000 bet that that prediction will come true. Whether you win or lose, your wager is donated to charity.

I feel pretty confident myself about making two predictions:

1. I predict it's a bad idea to make bets
2. I predict not many people will be placing $1000 bets on Prediction #1

2 comments:

o.r.p. said...

I am a horrible gambler. The thought of betting $1000 on anything makes my stomach do backflips. :p

--b

Jules said...

The minimum time allowed to make a prediciton is 2 years. That seems like a long time to wait and see if you've lost your money or not. Crazy site. Also, you have to pay $50 just to make your prediction. Can we say "money grab"? C'mon everybody, repeat after me: Money Grab.

-J-