I tried to make this post before from a Unix machine in the math dept., but the web browser screwed up and deleted the post. I finally have internet access in my room though, so I won't have to worry about that any more.

Bessie recommended that I post a site called longbets, which she had heard about from her sister. On this site people "bet" thousands of dolars (the proceeds go to charity) on the course of the future. For example the founder of Lotus and a major artificial intellegence researcher have a $10,000 bet over whether a machine will pass the turing test in the next 25 years. Not only are the subjects of the bets themselves interesting, but each of the people involved writes a page arguing their position, and these position papers are often fascinating.

One of the bets is of particular interest to bloggers: "In 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." In this case I think that both of the people are making their bets for the wrong reasons. The pro-nytimes person basically argues that the nytimes website will be more important and more often used than any weblogs. I certainly agree with this position. People who read weblogs are for the most part well informed news junkies who read the times as well as a dozen blogs. On the other hand lots of Times readers do not read any weblogs. I firmly believe that the nytimes will be getting more hits than any weblog in 2007. Despite the fact that both peoples argument concerns which will be more important and more widely read, the actual bet is not about hits or importance, but instead based on the results of google searches. As we all know google loves blogs. The question is not which site will be read more often, but which site will be linked to more often. Furthermore the nytimes requires registration and thus is even less likely to be linked (relative to say cnn as is demonstrated by the blogdex results for a given day). Thus, although I completely agree that in 5 years the nytimes webpage will be more widely read than any weblogs or even all weblogs taken together, I would not at all be surprised if a google search put weblog stories ahead of the Times.

One last bet of interest: The US men's soccer team will win the World Cup before the Red Sox win the World Series. The great quote concerning this bet is:

[i]n the World Cup, you have the whole WORLD against you, but, in baseball, the Red Sox only really have to beat the Yankees.

This bet reminds me of a bet I made with my brother Jesse a couple months ago. I claimed that the US would reach the finals in one of the next 10 world cups. He was willing to even give me odds. Whoever wins can go to the next world cup and the loser has to pay for either the game tickets (me) or the plane tickets (him). I'm pretty confident that was a good bet.

Of course we don't have enough money to make any real long bets of our own, but we do have pride, so if anyone has any suggestions I'd be willing to go on the record with my opinion one way or the other. I'd also be interested to know of all the open bets which one would you most want to bet against. (I think I'd go with No on this bet.