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Comment by fullshark | Hacker News Reader

That is what she claimed after the fact yes. Too bad the social media department of the WEF didn’t realize that and claimed it was a prediction for the year 2030:

https://m.facebook.com/worldeconomicforum/videos/8-predictio...

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It seems quite possible that she meant it as a thought experiment, but that other people, when they heard it, thought yeah that's how it will go down, turning it into a prediction, not her prediction exactly, but a prediction.

Or her essay was actually about what it's title and content literally said and the "thought experiment" line was a pitiful backpedal.

I mean, everything you write is a "thought experiment", that doesn't mean you are immune to the responses to the content.

For example, if you wrote something really racist and then got backlash, could you just claim it was a thought experiment to invoke discussions about race? Not successfully.

Does the semantics of "thought experiment" vs "prediction" really matter though? The point is it's a dystopian view being discussed at THE platform of world leaders... It doesn't look good at all.

The thing is this isn’t some sort of group proposal/idea, but essentially a blog post by a not-very-famous MP. And it’s not crazy for a socialist MP from that part of Europe to think about a system like this - a system of decreased cost and increased access.

IF that's the case, they shouldn't have put it in their 2030 predictions video and hosted it on their platform.

Handwaving it away as some low level actor's wacky vision isn't really a good or original excuse.

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