In 1870, Alfred Russell Wallace wagered against John Hampden, a flat-Earther, and won, but Hampden never paid up. This marked the beginning of a history of scientific wagers, many of which were initiated by Stephen Hawking. Recently, a 25-year-old bet between neuroscientist Christof Koch and philosopher David Chalmers was settled. The bet was about uncovering the neural correlates of consciousness, but no decisive outcome was reached. An adversarial collaboration organized by COGITATE attempted to distinguish between integrated information theory (IIT) and neuronal global workspace theory (GWT), but neither theory was fully supported. Despite this, the collaboration demonstrated a new way of doing things in consciousness science.
| Signal | Change | 10y horizon | Driving force |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scientific wagers on consciousness | From uncertainty to collaboration | More collaboration and refinement of theories | Desire to test and refine theories of consciousness |
| Adversarial collaborations in consciousness science | New way of doing things | More transparent and responsive theory development | Desire for more rigorous and challenging experiments |
| COGITATE collaboration and its findings | Advancement of IIT and GWT theories | Development and refinement of theories and methods | Desire for constraints and new explanatory targets |
| Requirement for theorists to state predictions in advance | Increased transparency and responsiveness in theory development | More accurate and less biased predictions | Mitigating the temptation to alter theories after results are known |
| Designing experiments that challenge preferred theories | Encouragement to design problematic experiments | More rigorous and unbiased experiments | Incentives to produce evidence against preferred theories |
| Consciousness as a tough nut to crack | Persistence of mystery and ongoing research | Continued iterations of theory and experiment | Desire to uncover the nature of consciousness |