Roko's basilisk but make it Austin

The resolution criteria seems to favor NO.

https://www.statista.com/topics/2229/billionaires-around-the-world/#topicOverview

Base rate by number of billionaires in the world is orders of magnitude off the question probability.

Here's a more relevant base rate: https://www.angellist.com/blog/angellist-unicorn-rate

@jgyou ? I'm too lazy to read it right now in detail tbh, but skimming it it seems you think the probability should be <= 2.5% ?

"If [assumption] we'd expect about 2.5% of seed-stage investments (at least those made on AngelList) to become unicorns."

That's right, so the relevant base rate is probably not "orders of magnitude off."

@jgyou I don't know about "probably". My statement was only conditional on the simplest of base rates. Also I'm not sophisticated enough to even guess how much of that $1B valuation you might expect to be converted into actual income for such unicorns.

Doesn't seem out of the question for future explosive economic growth to make most people billionaires or at least make it much easier to become a billionaire, even within the current financial system (extreme wealth doesn't imply post-scarcity).

That's why I included "in 2022 dollars". It'll be adjusted for any future inflation that may occur.

@IsaacKing I meant explosive real economic growth.

@StevenK If you mean that everyone is a billionaire while the cost of items remains the same as it is today, I have a hard time seeing how that wouldn't be a post-scarcity economy.

@IsaacKing Why? Just because everyone has an asteroid palace or whatever, that doesn't mean people don't want two asteroid palaces. I do agree that in practice it's likely that this kind of growth would be accompanied by enough upheaval to also change the financial system.

@StevenK Suppose in 20 years a kind of AI-driven industrial revolution begins that increases GDP growth by 10x. 26% annual growth means 1000x in 30 more years, so you get as many billionaires as you now have millionaires. Maybe nothing like that will happen, and I think if it does it will be a lot more explosive and destructive, but if you're starting at 5%, considerations like this add meaningfully to that.

@StevenK Ok, well, seems like a reason to bet YES. :)

even for a motivated and smart person working in tech, any individual is statistically very unlikely to become a billionaire

Will @Austin ever be a billionaire?, 8k, beautiful, illustration, trending on art station, picture of the day, epic composition