Did Advantageous come true?
Partly. Advantageous (2015) has a P(n) of 57% on Nearfi's P(n) Board, our estimate of the chance its future arrives within 20 years. Of its 4 tracked predictions, 2 have arrived and 1 are arriving. Its central premise, 'A person's consciousness and memories can be moved out of one body and into another, younger one', is still far off. The next prediction is estimated to arrive around 2040.
Advantageous is most prescient about its economics: a woman judged too old for a visible job, an industry that sells her a new face, and a falling birth rate in the background. All of that is here now. Its central device, moving a mind into another body, has no credible path in this window: the best brain emulation work so far covers an insect.
Read the review · 7.4/10 →
How this P(n) was calculated
P(n) is the chance that this work's future arrives within 20 years, by 2046. For each prediction we turn our estimate into a probability: arrived is 100%, diverged is 0%, and otherwise the low end of our 80% range counts as a 10% chance, the median year 50% and the high end 90%. Each prediction is weighted 1–5 by how pivotal it is to the story, and P(n) is the weighted average. P50 does the same by 2076. P(n), explained.
| Claim | Prediction · why this weight | Weight | Status · estimate | By 2046 | By 2076 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ADV-1 | A person's consciousness and memories can be moved out of one body and into another, younger one. Core premise: the transfer procedure is the film's central choice and its consequences are the whole plot. |
5 | FAR 2150 (2090–2300) | 3% | 8% |
| ADV-2 | Cosmetic procedures are a mass-market product, and a woman who looks older is judged less employable for a visible role. Major: Gwen's dismissal for looking older, and her need for a new face, drive the whole story. |
4 | ARRIVED arrived 2015 | 100% | 100% |
| ADV-3 | Fertility falls so far that falling birth rates and infertility become a mass public concern, and the wider economy reorganises around it. Supporting: infertility frames the setting and the egg-donor offer, but the plot is about work and a mother. |
3 | ARRIVING 2040 (2032–2065) | 60% | 94% |
| ADV-4 | Paid egg donation is an ordinary job option for a woman in financial difficulty. Texture: Gwen's only offer after dismissal; it shows her limited options and does not carry the plot. |
2 | ARRIVED arrived 2016 | 100% | 100% |
| P(n) = P20 = Σ(weight × chance by 2046) ÷ Σ weight = 7.9 ÷ 14 = 57% | |||||
| P50 = 9.2 ÷ 14 = 66% | |||||
Already here today (arrived 1, arriving ½, weighted): 54%.
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ADV-1
A person's consciousness and memories can be moved out of one body and into another, younger one.
Weight 5/5 · Core premise: the transfer procedure is the film's central choice and its consequences are the whole plot.
The nearest real work is brain emulation in small animals. In October 2024 researchers published a complete wiring map of an adult fruit fly brain, about 139,000 neurons, and a simulation built on it. A 2025 survey of the field says no organism's whole brain has been recorded at single-neuron resolution and that a human brain has roughly a million times more neurons than a fly. Nothing here moves a mind into a living body, and whether a copy of a mind is the same person is not a question science has settled. This may never happen, so the range assumes that it does. 123
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ADV-2
Cosmetic procedures are a mass-market product, and a woman who looks older is judged less employable for a visible role.
Weight 4/5 · Major: Gwen's dismissal for looking older, and her need for a new face, drive the whole story.
The International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery counted close to 38 million aesthetic procedures worldwide in 2024, 17.4 million surgical and 20.5 million non-surgical. A large field experiment, with more than 40,000 fake job applications, found robust evidence of age discrimination in hiring against older women, and much less against older men. Whether appearance is the mechanism is a hypothesis, not a finding. In the United States, age discrimination against workers over 40 is illegal, which is why the film's version is a matter of enforcement rather than of what is permitted. 456
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ADV-3
Fertility falls so far that falling birth rates and infertility become a mass public concern, and the wider economy reorganises around it.
Weight 3/5 · Supporting: infertility frames the setting and the egg-donor offer, but the plot is about work and a mother.
The Lancet's 2024 forecast puts global fertility at 2.2 children per woman in 2021, with 155 of 204 countries and territories below replacement level by 2050. The World Health Organization estimates that about one adult in six experiences infertility at some point. Neither shows the film's rapid biological decline. The first is a fall in births, and the second a lifetime prevalence figure with no trend in it. We read the claim as arriving through low birth rates and treat the film's biological framing as unproven. 78
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ADV-4
Paid egg donation is an ordinary job option for a woman in financial difficulty.
Weight 2/5 · Texture: Gwen's only offer after dismissal; it shows her limited options and does not carry the plot.
Paying egg donors is lawful and accepted in the United States, where the main professional body's ethics opinion says compensation is justified. It long predates the film, so the date given is that of the earlier version of the opinion. In the UK payment is capped as expenses and its regulator says it wants donors motivated by helping others. The film's version, a last resort after losing a job, is a risk the ethics bodies already name when they warn against undue enticement. 910
- FOR Neuronal wiring diagram of an adult brain. Nature, 2024-10-02. The first complete synaptic wiring map of an adult fruit fly brain, which is a precondition for any emulation, at insect scale.
- FOR A Drosophila computational brain model reveals sensorimotor processing. Nature, 2024-10-02. A simulation of the whole fly brain built from the wiring map, with 139,000 neurons, reproduces some sensory-to-motor responses.
- AGAINST State of Brain Emulation Report 2025. Zanichelli, Schons and others (project site), 2025-10-01. Says no organism's full brain has been recorded at single-neuron resolution and that data, not hardware, is the binding limit; progress is confined to small organisms.
- FOR Global Survey 2024: Full Report and Press Releases. International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ISAPS), 2025-06-19. Close to 38 million aesthetic procedures in 2024, up about 40% since 2020.
- FOR Is It Harder for Older Workers to Find Jobs? New and Improved Evidence from a Field Experiment. National Bureau of Economic Research (Neumark, Burn and Button), 2015-10-01. Resume experiment finds robust evidence of age discrimination in hiring against older women, and considerably less against older men.
- AGAINST Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA). U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 2026-11-06. US law forbids age discrimination against people aged 40 or over, so the practice is prohibited even where it persists. Page undated; date is the date accessed.
- FOR Lancet: Dramatic declines in global fertility rates set to transform global population patterns by 2100. Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, 2024-03-20. Forecasts 76% of countries below replacement fertility by 2050 and 97% by 2100.
- CONTEXT 1 in 6 people globally affected by infertility: WHO. World Health Organization, 2023-04-04. About 17.5% of adults experience infertility in their lifetime; the report gives a prevalence, not a rising trend, and notes treatment is mostly paid out of pocket.
- FOR Financial compensation of oocyte donors: an Ethics Committee opinion. American Society for Reproductive Medicine, 2021-01-01. Says compensation for donating oocytes is ethically justified, but it should not be an undue enticement. Replaces a 2016 version.
- AGAINST Our Director of Strategy and Corporate Affairs, Clare Ettinghausen, comments on the upcoming donor compensation increase. Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, 2024-10-01. UK egg donor compensation rises to £985 per cycle from 1 October 2024, framed as expenses; the regulator wants donation to stay altruistic.
Ledger updated 6 Nov 2026. All works on the P(n) Board · Method