I'm a bit bothered by the entire conversation. 2016 Person has found a way to communicate with 1996 Person. And yet, when asked to predict the future, he does not communicate with 2036 Person. This could imply that 2016 Person is only able to communicate with the past. This should not be a problem, since 2036 Person could get in touch with him. Who wouldn't, if they could, communicate with Albert Einstein or Sir Isaac Newton? It could be argued that, if he were dead, they wouldn't want to communicate with him, because they wouldn't want to give away the fact that he would be dead in 20 years, but he seems smart enough to figure out that is exactly what that would mean, so they would definitely communicate with him.

Since no one communicated with him, we're left with the implication that there is no one able to communicate with him in 2036. Best case scenario there seems to be that his secrets are lost to time (heh heh), but most of the other scenarios seem pretty dark to me...

Edit: Formatting

I wonder if blockchain technology could fix this paradox?

why would it be able to?

In order to limit the paradoxical effects that come from altering the past, communicating across time is only allowed once per universe.

This is great. I've always been fascinated by future predictions.

Do to think we'll have universal translators in 20 years. It seems like the technology is already 90% there?

Language is an incredibly difficult problem. Natural language processing can get you to 80% very easily, but we've been struggling with that last 20% for a long time.

As the saying goes, once you're done with the first 80%, you just need to complete the last 80%.

The reason is that intelligence is needed for the remaining 20%, and that's hard to emulate.

I think more likely there will be "tiers" of translators, with highest accuracy going first to languages with accessible and common Rosetta Stone-style word-for-word translations. Think French to German. Or Polish to Russian. Or English to everything else.

Langagues without vast translated data sets will probably be stitched together by various translations of multiple degrees. If you want to translate Farsi to Creole, for example, you probably won't find many direct translations to start with, but you'll probably have a better chance getting "mostly" there by going through a "hub" language like French or English.

I think if anything it revealed how most of our great predictions haven't happened.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QgSJkk1tng

I wonder if it has something to do with privatizing technology and reducing resources towards scientific research.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12960918 and marked it off-topic.

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Have an upvote.

I think you missed the humour, friend.