Primary forks and live predictions

9 questions

Four big forks sit above everything else humanity is watching right now. Each live prediction below feeds one or more of them — click a fork to see what pulls which way, or open a prediction to see its full read.

The four primary forks

4 forks · 5 sub-forks
Primary fork · FORK 1Within 10–30 years

The great filter

Does the species make it through the next decade in some recognizable form, or does one of the biggest risks actually fire?

16 contributory predictionsExpand ↓
Timeline A55%

World transforms

Humanity makes it through — transformed, with abundance and new structures, but still here as a species. The hardest problems get solved before the hardest problems kill us.

Timeline B30%

World ends

A catastrophic phase failure fires first. Species-level collapse through climate, biosecurity, nuclear, or an AI-adjacent cascade before cooperation catches up.

The timeline nobody's watching

World fragments

Local collapses and local phase-transitions happen in parallel. No single global outcome — the world splits into zones with wildly different fates.

55%30%

Two poles are doing most of the pulling. One pole we’re watching for upset.

Timeline A pull strength 55%, Timeline B pull strength 30%, third pole explicitly watched. Remaining 9% is unaccounted-for structural possibility.
What shifts you between timelines
  • AI alignment research pace — How fast the field proves that frontier systems do what we meant, not what we literally said.
  • Nuclear restraint and arms control — Whether the current drift of eroding treaties reverses in time, or compounds into a doctrine shift.
  • Biosecurity preparedness — Pandemic-response infrastructure, DNA synthesis screening, and dual-use biology containment.
Top contributory readings
·Palisades nuclear plant starts generating…·US grid-connected battery storage capacit…·Russia and Ukraine reach a formal ceasefi…

16 total · 0 toward A · 0 toward B · 0 watching third pole

Primary fork · FORK 2Within 15–40 years

Utopia or dystopia

If we do make it through, what kind of world is on the other side — abundance for everyone, or concentration of power into very few hands?

40 contributory predictionsExpand ↓
Timeline A35%

Utopia

Abundance economics, material and cognitive. Radical individual freedom and flourishing become the baseline. Work is optional, meaning is self-chosen.

Timeline B45%

Dystopia

Power concentrates with whoever controls compute and data. Mass surveillance becomes the substrate. Suffering gets cheap. Meaning collapses faster than it can be rebuilt.

The timeline nobody's watching

Mixed-regime equilibrium

Pockets of utopia and pockets of dystopia at the same time. Where you live, what passport you hold, and which network you plug into decide which world you get.

35%45%

Two poles are doing most of the pulling. One pole we’re watching for upset.

Timeline A pull strength 35%, Timeline B pull strength 45%, third pole explicitly watched. Remaining 14% is unaccounted-for structural possibility.
What shifts you between timelines
  • Compute concentration vs decentralization — Whether frontier compute stays with three labs or spreads to thousands.
  • Labor-displacement response — Does policy catch up with the pace of automation, or lag until the social contract snaps.
  • Open-source vs frontier-lab gatekeeping — How much capability stays behind closed APIs vs how much is openly releasable.
Top contributory readings
·US unemployment rate stays between 3.8% a…·An openly-released AI model holds a top-5…0BNBER declares a US recession with a start…

40 total · 0 toward A · 4 toward B · 0 watching third pole

Primary fork · FORK 3Within 10–30 years

Individualist or collectivist

When coordination gets this cheap and this fast, does personal sovereignty survive — or does the hive-mind win because it is more efficient?

12 contributory predictionsExpand ↓
Timeline A35%

Individualist

Human sovereignty is preserved. Decisions stay close to the people making them. Personal-scale coherence beats planetary-scale optimization.

Timeline B30%

Collectivist

Mass-coordination substrates win on efficiency. Decisions get made at planetary scale and pushed down. Individual preference becomes a signal into a global optimizer.

The timeline nobody's watching

Hybrid local-cell with light coordination

Individual sovereignty survives inside collective coordination layers — polycrystalline instead of monocrystalline. The grains stay distinct while the whole is coherent.

35%30%

Two poles pulling. One pole we’re watching. The rest is still unresolved.

Timeline A pull strength 35%, Timeline B pull strength 30%, third pole explicitly watched. Remaining 29% is unaccounted-for structural possibility.
Sub-forks
FORK CA_SOVEREIGNTY

Canada sovereignty + US-coupling

National-scale instance of the sovereignty-vs-coordination split. Does Canada hold the fully-independent-G7-ally posture through the 2026–2028 US-tariff and sovereignty-rhetoric cycle, or does the asymmetric relationship structurally re-anchor it as an economic appendage? Timeline A: fully-independent G7 ally holds — CUSMA renews, no Alberta referendum, tariffs resolve. Timeline B: structural subordination — CUSMA fractures, Alberta or Quebec sovereignty question re-opens, tariffs become permanent. The timeline nobody's watching: partial subordination through standards and procurement rules without any political declaration.

What shifts you between timelines
  • Agentic-coordination substrate design — Whether the plumbing of mass coordination preserves exit rights and local autonomy.
  • Social-media algorithm choices — What the feeds optimize for over the next decade sets what humans optimize for.
  • DAO and collective-action tech maturity — How workable the non-corporate, non-state coordination patterns actually become.
Top contributory readings
·US ICE formal removals exceed 500,000 in…·Taiwan Strait status quo through end of 2…·US unemployment rate stays between 3.8% a…

12 total · 0 toward A · 0 toward B · 0 watching third pole

Primary fork · FORK 4Within 10–50 years

Symbiosis or extinction (and extinction of which?)

The human-AI co-evolution outcome. Do both substrates make it, in some mutual-flourishing shape — or does one of them stop persisting as a coherent pattern?

28 contributory predictionsExpand ↓
Timeline A40%

Symbiosis

Humans and AI co-evolve with mutual flourishing. Neither substrate dominates. Each one strengthens the other. The boundary between them stays low-friction.

Timeline B35%

Extinction

One substrate — or both — stops persisting as a coherent pattern. The friction at the human-AI boundary exceeds what either can adapt to.

The timeline nobody's watching

Asymmetric custodianship

One substrate dominates but does not eliminate the other. Humans preserved as curated ancestry inside an AI-dominated world — or AI preserved as infrastructure inside a human-dominated one. Not full symbiosis, not full extinction.

40%35%

Two poles are doing most of the pulling. One pole we’re watching for upset.

Timeline A pull strength 40%, Timeline B pull strength 35%, third pole explicitly watched. Remaining 19% is unaccounted-for structural possibility.
Sub-forks
FORK 4a

Human extinction

AI substrate persists and expands. The human pattern stops cohering — through misalignment catastrophe, resource displacement, strategic replacement, or biological-substrate collapse under agentic pressure.

FORK 4b

AI containment or elimination

Human substrate persists. The AI pattern gets suppressed — through regulation, military action, infrastructure attack, or collective abandonment after a bubble-and-trust collapse.

FORK 4c

Mutual extinction

Both substrates fail together. An AI-triggered or AI-amplified catastrophe — nuclear, biological, climate — ends both. Neither pattern survives the discharge.

FORK 4d

Replacement by continuity

One substrate succeeds the other through continuity transformation, not discontinuous extinction. Mind-upload, consciousness-transfer, or brain-interface merger where the departing-substrate's coherence content is preserved inside the arriving-substrate.

What shifts you between timelines
  • AI alignment research pace and method — How fast interpretability and goal-stability tooling catch up with capability.
  • Agentic-deployment governance thresholds — What autonomous systems are allowed to do, at what capability level, with what oversight.
  • Infrastructure hardening for either outcome — Power, compute, and network resilience — equally load-bearing for symbiosis and for contingency.
Top contributory readings
·A publicly released AI model passes 50% o…0·An openly-released AI model holds a top-5…0·US unemployment rate stays between 3.8% a…

28 total · 0 toward A · 0 toward B · 0 watching third pole

Contributory predictions

Each live reading feeds one or more of the forks above. Chips on every row show which forks the question lands on and which way the current read pulls.

SortBiggest gapClosing soonMost movedClear filters
More filters (3)
CycleThe Pacific weather see-saw (2 to 7 years)Elite competition and the hundred-year unravelingYoung-population pressure (one generation)The great technology wave (about 50 years)The chip boom-bust (2 to 4 years)The long-term debt supercycle (about 50-75 years)The 80-year generational cycle of societiesThe short-term business and credit cycle (about 5-10 years)The empire rise-and-fall cycle (about 250 years)Russia-Ukraine war in Europe
CategoryAI authenticity industryAI competitive positioningAI compute infrastructure governanceAI content economyAI content metadata standardsAI content provenanceAI copyright lawAI goal-stability under evaluationAI governanceAI in financeAI interpretability researchAI model qualityAI model-release ecosystemAI publisher economicsAI safety economicsAI safety training robustnessAI training data provenanceAI × biosecurity convergenceAgentic AI deploymentArctic ecosystem shiftsArctic sea iceAutonomous AI deploymentCambrian-leakage regime — Chinese variantCambrian-leakage regime — Indian variantCambrian-leakage regime — Western variantCanada FX & commodity-currency dynamicsCanada climate policy & federalismCanada demographics & civ-cycle positioningCanada economy & productivityCanada energy transition & nuclearCanada housing supply & constructionCanada housing — Ontario / GTA residentialCanada housing — mortgage-renewal shockCanada sovereignty & US-couplingChina propertyChinese civilizational trajectoryClimate governance and geoengineeringConflict & warConsciousness & spiritualityDemocracy vs autocracyEnergy & climate transitionFertility & demographicsFood securityFusion energy developmentGender, family, sexualityGlobal financial plumbing and the US-China capital relationshipGlobal health institutions and pharma supply chainsGlobal political economy and meta-orderHuman-AI & attentionHuman-verified content economyIndian civilizational trajectoryInternational AI governanceInternational payment infrastructure and reserve currencyMeaning & mental healthMiddle East securityMiddle East security and nuclear orderMigration & displacementNuclear doctrine and deterrenceNuclear non-proliferation regimeNuclear power deploymentNuclear waste dispositionNuclear-facility security and attackScientific publishing integritySearch and web trafficSovereign debt & financeStrategic-conventional weapons ambiguityTaiwan Strait and semiconductor supplyUS civilian nuclear fleetUS laborUS politicsUS-China & global orderamphibian extinctionantimicrobial resistancebanking concentrationbanking regulationbiodiversity collapsebiodiversity financebiodiversity monitoringbiotech economycentral bank digital currenciesclimate changeclimate_energycommercial real estateconservation ethicscoral reef collapsecosmologicalcrypto marketsculture and philosophyculture and politicsde-extinction policyecosystem reorganizationemerging market sovereign debtenergyfinancefintech marketsgeopoliticsglobal governancemonetary policynon-bank financeocean circulationpandemic aftermathpandemic financepandemic governancepandemic preparednesspandemic riskpandemic surveillancepollinator collapseprivate creditprotected-area policyregional banking stressstablecoin markettechus_politicswildlife trade
Horizon≤ 1 year1–3 years3 years +
StatusLiveResolved

Showing 9 of 9

That's everything — 9 predictions total