If are in the humanities and want to win a case of wine in the future, bet against someone in the information theory space. Neither of you can ever really be correct but the one with at least the pretense of the scientific method will have to admit they have fallen prey to someone like a post-modernist, who can never be wrong. On anything. Ever. Because truth is just a cultural reflex and can't be grounded epidemiologically.

That is what happened to Christof Koch, PhD, when he was young enough to believe he was in a science field and that the Truth Is Out There. Some 25 years he argued in a debate with David Chalmers that by 2023 the 'mechanism' in neurons that produce consciousness would be found.

To many, 25 years sounds like a long time - but you should take that bet, for the same reason if someone says they are sure new couple X and Y will get married or that a new restaurant will succeed. About 85 percent of the time, you are right in arguing that it will not happen. Even psychics and mediums know the basics of the world in which we live but a young information theory guy? Nope.

Anyway, Koch is absolutely an astute enough judge of the human condition to know I am just twerking his zeitgesit, he hasn't been writing op-eds at Scientific American for so long he is that far gone. 

The bet was settled after two leading "hypotheses" - in quotes because neither is a scientific hypothesis but it is a colloquial term now - about “the neural basis of consciousness” were empirically tested and neither had any results outside the statistical noise range and Dr. Koch accepted his defeat.

Now go find Ray Kurzweil and take any bet he offers on when his Singularity will occur. He pushed is back once a decade but in the 1960s, when his digital fixation began, 2035 probably sounded pretty good.