What are your predictions for

In My Humble Opinion
1

We are getting close to the end of the year, so I figured I’d do a thread on predictions. In this thread, feel free to make whatever predictions you want for whatever timeframe you’d like. What I’d love to see is predictions for the new year, and maybe medium-term predictions (say, 20-50 years) and long-term predictions…say 100 years. It will be interesting to see what people think will happen on the longer timelines, as well as how they hold up going forward (assuming this board is still around in either 50 or 100 years :stuck_out_tongue: )

My own predictions for 2022 are: No war in Ukraine. I think Russia will pull back (they have already agreed to pull out a token force of 10K). This is going to have to be resolved, eventually, but I don’t see it happening in 2022. I hope the groundwork for a resolution will happen in that timeframe, however. I don’t believe there will be an invasion attempt in Taiwan in 2022…I think the Chinese were seriously considering it, but I think the response has been such that I don’t think the political environment is conducive to a successful attempt. On the pandemic side, I think that this year we will see another large wave (no prediction there, it’s happening already), but I think this wave, while large, will have fewer deaths, and I think this will be the last really large wave. Covid will be firmly entrenched in the human population after this year and will be more like seasonal flu (which is a hell of a lot more deadly than people seem to realize). We will need to get vaccination shots each year, just like with the flu going forward. Economically, I think we will see a recession and inflation taking a toll on things, and we will continue to have supply chain issues throughout 2022, especially with respect to technology-related items. We will continue to see a shift out of China wrt supply chains and manufacturing to other countries, or even back to the main countries, and I think we’ll see a move away from just in time delivery especially of critical items such as chips, with an emphasis on chip production being more distributed and robust than it currently is. We will see some very sever weather events this year due to climate change and just wonky weather patterns.

Anyway, I’ll leave it there for now. There is a lot going on in the world right now, and lots of things to make predictions on, but those are the highlights. I won’t get into my own 50 or 100-year predictions at this point.

2

Great idea for a thread!

Prediction: Russia will invade further into Ukraine in 2022, just far enough to create a land corridor with Crimea.

Prediction: There will be a sharp stock market correction in 2022, possibly triggered by a rise in interest rates.

3

By this same time next year I will feel older and more tired. But I will also be retired at that point, so improvement after that may occur.

4

I predict for at least the next 25-50 years the Sun will rise in the East and set in the West, the Moon will cause tides to rise and fall in a predictable pattern, and bitterly cold winds will plague both the North and South poles for about 6 months a year, more or less.

5

In 2022, at least one more male celebrity will be revealed to have sexually harassed and/or assaulted multiple women. His career will hardly suffer at all before rebounding bigger than it was before.

California will suffer another devastating series of wildfires, while housing prices continue to increase much faster than inflation.

The series finale of Better Call Saul will leave its most vocal viewers angry and disappointed. But I’ll like it.

We’ll run out of Greek letters before the year is up. Perhaps we’ll switch to naming variants after ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. I can’t wait for my bird booster.

I will just keep getting fatter and more miserable until I quit my job. I will continue to delude myself that it might get better, maybe even for another year. But when I do finally quit, I’ll be satisfied that I really gave it all I had, and I won’t look back.

6

I agree with the stock market one. Maybe due to interest rates. But maybe due to a lot of folks and big investors sensing the peak.
Disagree with Ukraine invasion basic concept. But maybe heightened, more obvious support for the two areas in dispute. Hopefully there will be a better adherence to the Minsk accords and things will get better.
I think inflation will take a big hike. Maybe another link to a stock market crash.
China may play a reverse trade embargo. Lessening trade to North America and others, to highlight our dependence on them. Slowing their production for export. Concentrating within and close neighbors.
Escalating division amongst folks in the U.S. For false reasons. Reported falsely. Blamed falsely. Fostering even more division.
More shortages of things. Due to real or managed reasons. Increasing inflation and profits.

7

Sometime around 2030.

One of the 50 states finally gets frustrated and passes a form of UHC via ballot initiative. Politicians of both parties try to prevent it from being enacted, but eventually they are forced to accept it. Much like when Colorado led the way with marijuana legalization, this will pave the way for ballot initiatives for UHC in other states, and soon after that it’ll be passed via legislation in a few blue states. Eventually it’ll go national about 20 years later.

9

My 50-year predictions are that we will see a rise in automation such that most low-end jobs are replaced by robots. You’ll still have humans working at, say, a fast-food place, but robots will do the majority of the work with humans basically supervising. We’ll also see automation in many other fields, including medicine, legal, mid-level management, and a lot of other traditionally white-collar jobs as well. I also think that autonomous driving will be fully implemented, which also will impact long-haul trucking and other driving jobs. It’s going to be a huge short-term disruption, but then we’ve been living in huge short-term disruptions due to technology for over a century now, so why would it change?

Climate change will be hitting us hard in this time frame, with severe weather impacting us globally. Some countries will be hit harder than others. I think there will still be ice and glaciers, but the sea ice will be mostly gone during summers. We will not meet our climate goals of zero emissions, but we won’t hit the highest levels either…we’ll hit somewhere in the mid-point, so maybe 2 degrees C change. By the end of these 50 years, we will be starting to seriously mitigate things, however, at least wrt new CO2 production. I expect nearly all new cars will be electric by this point, with the number of ICE vehicles slowly dropping as new ones aren’t being made for the general public who doesn’t want them anymore. We will, finally, be building nuclear fission plants as small modular reactors at scales to really take a bite out of fossil fuel generation of power, and most countries will have completely shut down coal and the only fossil fuel burning will be natural gas by this point, with even that fading out as the need for it diminishes since we have viable nuclear. Along those same lines, the first full-scale test fusion plant able to do 10 times start energy will be in operation, and plans and designs for commercial plants will start to be drawn up.

Dogs and cats will, in fact, be living together but it won’t be total chaos…most like mostly chaos. In space, I expect that the same group that makes up the countries supporting the international space station (maybe sans Russia, but maybe not) will come together to build a Moon base for research and development. There will be several manned space stations in orbit, some national some commercial, and at least one orbiting the Moon. We will have sent out several probes to NEOs and done preliminary surveys for materials and resources, but no serious attempts at this point to start doing exploitation. There will be at least one manned Mars mission in this time frame, but I expect several, using some sort of permanently orbiting spacecraft on a modified citadel orbit that takes crews to and from Mars, as well as a semi-permanent base there for research.

Technology-wise, I think we’ll move to more highly integrated technology, augmented reality as well as virtual reality for teaching, training, and entertainment. The technology will be ubiquitous and everyone will have it. Internet and communications at what we’d consider to be mind-blowing bandwidths will be available in most places on the planet, and folks will complain how slow it is. :stuck_out_tongue: There will be jobs that are mainstream at that time that we don’t even imagine today, or that we don’t think of as ‘real’ jobs.

Health-wise, I think that health care will continue to improve, with real strives being made in bioengineering, gene therapy, and modification, and many diseases that we can’t do much about today will at least be mitigated in the future. Life expectancy, which has stagnated recently, will start to rise again. I think that our population will start to be in decline with serious demographic issues hitting a variety of countries, but that increasing longevity and healthcare will start to impact this in more positive ways…expect for the continued climate crisis we will still be dealing with at this stage.

Other than that…well, I’ll be dead by that point, so the world will have lost a great asset. :wink: Someone on the 'dope 50 year from now will revive this thread as a zombie and be amazed at my powers of prediction, and a cult will be started in my name…the Cult of the XT…and people will raise glasses of fine scotch or tequila in my honor while puffing away at the still sadly illegal Cuban cigars while thinking fondly of my memory.

10

For 2022:

  • Republicans will attain majorities in both the House and Senate, but only narrow ones due to Trumpian interference, and they won’t be any better at getting things done than Democrats.
  • There will be a stock market “correction”, but not as marked as in 2020.
  • At least one new Covid variant will occur and a second booster shot will be recommended for all adults.
  • Outbreak of a non-Covid or new infectious disease will be wildly hyped by the news media to scare the crap out of everybody.
  • Brave Maverick Fringe Doctors and Scientists will continue to accumulate followers and cash.
  • My garden will be even more magnificent than in past years.
11

I predict a 9.0 earthquake in the US within the next 25 years, most likely in California, that causes hundreds or thousands of deaths and lots of destruction. Many people will try to flee the cities when a major aftershock does them in. It takes 20 years to rebuild, only to be followed by a second major quake in the same area. Some people never learn.

12

The meaning of the words resolve, health care, continue and improve will converge asymptotically on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean in the next 50 years but will never reach an identical meaning.

A freak snow storm forces the suspension of the World Cup Final in Qatar. After several players and dignitaries had fingers and toes amputated due to frostbite the Final is finally (ha!) decided on a Play Station.

In the next 20 years the United Kingdom will get rid of the monarchy and become a plutocratic republic. King Charles III will be beheaded.

In the next 50 years Texas will be expelled from the USA. Mexico will annex it, but they will pay for it.

I will survive this hangover too.

13

Forgot to mention:

  • the Queen will die in 2022, and Prince Charles will finally be installed as Homeopathic Emperor of the United Kingdom.
14

Isn’t it generally anticipated that Charles will reign as George VII?

15

Wikipedia writes “no decision has been made”, but when I think of beheading the name Charles naturally comes up. But I don’t really mind under which name he is beheaded, as long as he is.

16

We (collectively) have been getting cocky about space, and too confident of our capabilities regarding it. In next couple of years space will remind us, again, just how dangerous it is. And that treating it as a billionaire’s theme park was a bad idea.

I predict a spectacular news story, followed by a sharp reduction in the number of rich people making vanity trips to the Karman Line.

17

I predict that at some point during the next 50 years somebody’s going to finally really get batteries down. It will become possible to run the average household for a week or longer off one or two batteries each of which will be small and light enough for most people to easily carry, cheap enough for most people to buy a dozen if they want (and businesses to buy larger quantities as needed), and not reliant on rare or hazardous materials in their construction.

Some will charge these batteries from solar, wind, etc. installations on their own land; and some from neighborhood setups. Others will schlep drained batteries to an exchange station, where they’ll be switched out for batteries that were charged in some location where power was more easily available and then trucked around to exchange stations that need them; these stations may be stand-alones or part of an ordinary grocery store or some such.

The power grid will disappear. Nobody’s power will go out in storms (though some people’s may because they forgot to switch their batteries.) There will be no broken high-voltage lines to start fires, or to endanger those going out after a storm. Nobody will be reliant on a specific power company; if one has problems, batteries can just be shipped in from a power producer who’s not having the problems. (Major problems in the general distribution/transportation system may cause local shortages, however.)

Whoever first gets these on the market, and/or holds the patents, is going to make a mint. Whatever grid-reliant power producers don’t shift gears fast enough are going to lose a mint.

And, since I’ve given this prediction 50 years, and I’m already 70: nobody will be able to point out to me that I was wrong if it doesn’t happen, since I’ll be too dead to hear or read them.

– actually, here’s a second prediction, or maybe a second and third: for at least the next 50 years and very likely much longer, there will be people predicting that Immortality (or at least hugely expanded life spans) for Humans Is Right Around The Corner. It won’t happen.

18

I predict that there will be a significant right wing terrorist attack in the US in 2022 and that many GOP members of Congress will not condemn it while white moderates insist that it isn’t a sign of any deep problems with our democracy.

19

Define “significant” (over a certain threshold for death and destruction?), “terrorist” (intended to create fear for political gain, or isolated loony with a grudge?) and “right wing” and we can track this better. Otherwise it’s like a Nostradamus prediction - so vague that lots of things could be deemed prophecy fulfillment.’

*who are these “white moderates” of which you speak?

20

More global warming, leading to crops being able to be grown longer, thus less hunger. Phones will be embedded in humans so all they’ll have to do is wonder something and the answer will come right to them. The electoral college will be done away with, making someone win with 20 per cent of the vote. The Superbowl will be won by whichever teams quartbacks make the most money.

21

Significant would be Oklahoma City or the Olympic bombings both of which conservatives did, or the assassination of a prominent Democrat like Pelosi, or AOC. The attacker(s) will be found to have had lots of contact with GOP politicians, attending rallies, etc.

White moderates are the old white people who always tell you that this isn’t bad, you should have been around in the 60s. They always mention Kent State, because it is one of the few times any white middle class boomers paid any price for their actions. They are the people responsible for normalizing fascism in America, their inability to see past their own comfort and privilege is what’s preventing us from addressing the very real rise of white nationalist authoritarianism in the GOP. White moderates are unwitting allies to Trumpists and are akin to the white moderates that MLK called out in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail.