3 ms·

I cannot find anything on Google about the "Gaes-Marreau Law" or "gaes-marreau". Could you please link me to something that explains it?

• gwern 9y ago
  It's 'Maes–Garreau law'. Kelly made up a 'law' based on a few AI predictions falling into a certain range; but you can see from the linked paper (which uses like 20x more predictions) that it's not really that accurate a law and there's more that goes into AI forecasts than just +X years. (For example, China vs the West in OP, which is interesting and makes sense thinking about it, but hadn't occurred to me.)
  • chicob 9y ago
    Yes, it's not actually a law, but a (perhaps cynical) heuristic. Possible interpretations: * People do not want to sound too optimistic but they hope to see some improvements before they die; * People hope they are dead before someone proves them wrong; * People deal with temporal magnitudes in the order of the human lifespan and close multiples. The last one, and then the first, are my guesses.