"It's Hard To Make Predictions, Especially About the Future"

Lust, Longevity, and FDA reform at the World Future Society Conference

Ronald Bailey | July 31, 2007

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That would be a good motto for the futurists here in Minneapolis to adopt. I will be filing another dispatch rounding up various sessions and talks here at the WFS tomorrow.

Disclosure: Greg Stock is a personal friend, but I don't let his brilliance get in the way of my objective reporting of his work.

Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent. His book Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution is now available from Prometheus Books.

Comments

|7.31.07 @ 4:54PM|#

The future of love and family? The future of biotech? I want a hybrid hovercraft! And sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads, dammit!

OK, so maybe that last one is somewhat related to biotech.

|7.31.07 @ 5:19PM|#

Remind me again why anyone cares what a bunch of incompetent sci-fi authors have to say about the future?

I'd have better luck, for less money, calling a telephone psychic.

Brian Sorgatz|7.31.07 @ 5:21PM|#

Minneapolis-The hoary aphorism headlined above, variously attributed to Yogi Berra, Neils Bohr or Mark Twain....

I would have guessed Ed Wood. It sounds like dialogue from Plan 9 From Outer Space.

|7.31.07 @ 5:31PM|#

"Greg Stock is a personal friend, but I don't let his brilliance..."
If he is so fucking brilliant why isn't he rich? I by rich, especial biotech and the future, I meand minimum 100 million?
If he is so fucking brilliant why is he still in school? Why isn't he applying his brillancey in the real world?
And don't give me the horse shit that he has a PHd. It seems a PHd is more likely to weld a mind shut then open it up.

|7.31.07 @ 5:41PM|#

What's the matter, Terry? You can tell Uncle Jason.

|7.31.07 @ 5:55PM|#

Jason blow me.

Problem is that term "brillant" is used far to often.
It used to be Einstein was "brillant" and others were "very smart".
Today it seems Einstein would be labeled "mega briallant" and every other Tom, Dick and Jane, "brillant".
Well, I want facts now, supporting evidence.
If they really are "brillant" it shouldn't be hard to give it.

|7.31.07 @ 6:06PM|#

Terry: I'm just curious, when did Einstein make $100 million?

As for Greg, in the "real world" he actually started a biotech company 3 years ago that has gone through two rounds of venture financing for several million dollars.

Randolph Carter|7.31.07 @ 6:16PM|#

See ya later Saint Franny, ya schmuck. Hey, guess who's better than Van Gogh? Well let's see... adjusting for inflation, almost everybody! He made nothing! I'm better than you, brainiac.

It's Worthington's Law, bitch.

|7.31.07 @ 6:24PM|#

Einstein won a nobel prize and probably should have won a few more.

Okay, now we are getting somewhere.
What is the name of the biotech company?
Are you invested in it?
See, specifics, proof, its nice.

BTW: I asked this before, does anyone know of a mutual fund that is run according to libertarian principles?
thanks

Paul|7.31.07 @ 11:02PM|#

anthropologist and the chief scientific officer of the web dating site chemistry.com, Helen Fisher.

I cannot effing believe that all of these words appear in the same sentence. I'll bet she earns more than anyone here, too.

|7.31.07 @ 11:02PM|#

One can easily imagine someday concocting a biotech love potion consisting of oxytocin or vasopressin analogues that one could slip into the drink of the object one's affection to nudge him or her into thinking more favorably of your charms.

I imagine vodka would work with this method, but I don't recommend it for moral and libertarian/legal reasons.

Paul|7.31.07 @ 11:03PM|#

Fisher believes that this process is a return to an earlier era of gender equality that existed before the advent of agriculture ten thousand years ago.

Hey Ron, was Ms. Fisher wearing any headgear fashioned from tinfoil?

Paul|7.31.07 @ 11:06PM|#

"What we are seeing is a return to life as it was 100,000 years ago." What did she mean? Well, among other things, Fisher argues that modern serial monogamy is similar to what happens in hunting and gathering societies in which men and women often have two or three spouses over their lifetimes.

Well, I'll be... sounds like my ex-wife is so 100,000 years ago.

Ok, I'll stop now.

Paul|7.31.07 @ 11:08PM|#

Fisher claimed that women are more openly expressing their sexuality, beginning sex at earlier ages, having more partners,

Ok, I can't stand it...

Young girls in Burien, Wa have been on this train for a long time. Average age of motherhood: 13

|8.1.07 @ 1:07AM|#

Burien? Where is Burien?
Do you have to pay for the girls or just promise them a visa or a coke?

Paul|8.1.07 @ 3:06PM|#

Burien? Where is Burien?
Do you have to pay for the girls or just promise them a visa or a coke?

Burien, Wa. Suburb of Seattle. It's so damned ghetto, ghetto people make fun of it.