As part of the Forecasting Our World in Data tournament we offered $4,000 for the best 19 comments that explore likely developments in humanity’s long term future, from a decade to a century from now. We’re very pleased to announce the winners of our Commenting Prize:

• SpottedBear – $1,500
• Zaldath – $1,500
• Sune – $800
• DerMannOhneEigenschaften – $100
• kokotajlod – $100

Congratulations to the winners of the Commenting Prize, who helped make the Forecasting Our World in Data tournament a resource for thinking about humanity’s long-term future.

The winning commentary included:

• SpottedBears’ analysis of a potential lower bound on child mortality in the next 100 years.
• Zaldath’s comment discussing the possibility that the number of objects launched into space stabilizes after the next decade due to space debris and limited orbit space around Earth, and the potential shift to probes.
• Sune’s argument that the community was underweighting world per capita energy consumption in 2122, using Metaculus forecasts for AI training costs and Landauer’s principle of a minimum theoretical energy consumption for computation.

Extra congratulations are due to SpottedBear and Zaldath, who both made a number of excellent comments and each reached the $1,500 prize cap. Nice work, SpottedBear and Zaldath!

You can still predict in the Forecasting Our World in Data tournament, where you can forecast on the trajectory of the human condition over the next 100 years, as well as earn a share of the $8,000 prize pool for predicting what the year 2025 will look like. Start predicting! And though this Commenting Prize has concluded, sharing valuable reasoning and information with the community can still earn you medals and a place on our commenting leaderboard.

Congratulations again to our commenting prize winners, SpottedBear, Zaldath, Sune, DerMannOhneEigenschaften, and kokotajlod!

The winning comments: