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There was an amusing example of this yesterday with The Economist saying, `The sharp increase in inflation over the past year has blindsided many economists. Almost no one saw it coming` https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/1461651190144503808
ZeroHedge has predicted 83 of the last 7 downturns.
Individual experts—the good ones at least—seem to hold up pretty well even if they didn't see everything coming.
It's the widespread sampling of chyrons and faces that inevitably says everything all of the time and winds up looking incompetent.
“Don’t be discouraged by the failure of technology or approaches of the past. If the problem is still important after all this time then it’s a problem worth solving. Don’t avoid unsuccessful solutions. Avoid insignificant problems. Success this time around could be unlocked by advances in any number of unrelated disciplines.”
https://blog.eutopian.io/the-next-big-thing-go-back-to-the-f...
This article is uncannily apropos for HN. The spectrum of opinions towards emerging technologies is so starkly colored by the eras during which practitioners did their primary work. It reminds me of the Heinlein quote from “A Door into Summer”, “When railroading time comes you can railroad—but not before.”
It's a pain, but one of the nice parts is that it drives you to look for deeper principles. E.g., when my dad started coding, machine time was really expensive as was storage space, so everybody optimized for those things. Hello, Y2K! Now the opposite is true: developer time has gotten more expensive, and computation is cheap. In one sense, that invalidates a lot of old expertise. But on the other, optimization is still usually important, we're just optimizing for different things. A little reframing of habits and you can end up with a more flexible and subtle model.
This is where I stopped reading, although I will finish the article.
He’s writing about the stereotype.
Humility often comes with this experience and wisdom. Some people are capable of seeing that everything is changing, all the time, regardless of their personal experience.
That recognition frees you to embrace new, different, the things that used to be unthinkable.
There was an amusing example of this yesterday with The Economist saying, `The sharp increase in inflation over the past year has blindsided many economists. Almost no one saw it coming` https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/1461651190144503808
ZeroHedge has predicted 83 of the last 7 downturns.
This article is uncannily apropos for HN. The spectrum of opinions towards emerging technologies is so starkly colored by the eras during which practitioners did their primary work. It reminds me of the Heinlein quote from “A Door into Summer”, “When railroading time comes you can railroad—but not before.”
For sure. The older I get, the more I try to watch out for this effect. It's a pain, but one of the nice parts is that it drives you to look for deeper principles. E.g., when my dad started coding, machine time was really expensive as was storage space, so everybody optimized for those things. Hello, Y2K! Now the opposite is true: developer time has gotten more expensive, and computation is cheap. In one sense, that…
Optimization never grows old, but it’s the more general form of optimization of which you speak, rather than hyper-specific instances of optimization which can overfit to specific eras.
This article offers nothing of value IMO... because what it's saying is basically that experts will, at some point, fail to see that circumstances have changed and advice that was good in their own "time" is no longer good... however, that's an obvious remark: as another commenter pointed out, people almost always tend to think "this time it will be different" and choose to ignore the experts... I would say more usef…
I'm still a little bitter from VC experiences 20 years ago.
In 1998 my friends and I built a browser-based (Java applet) collaborative word processor and spreadsheet called Office Wherever (o-w.com). We shopped it to a dozen VCs and all went ROFLMAOWTFBBQ. They all said the same - no company would want to put their files on the (scary) Internet (the term "cloud" was still years away).
In 2001 my friend and I had built a full music & movie/tv streaming service with a full-screen interface that looks just like the modern ones, built demo hardware, had access to all the rights etc. Everyone we pitched it to went ROFLMAOWTFBBQ. They said people will NEVER get rid of their DVDs! They like having things on their shelves to show off. What a stupid idea! You need to be like Netflix and rent DVDs to people! You stupid! STUPID STUPID STUPID!
I wonder what folks are pitching today to VCs who are rolling on the floor laughing when they see the "stupid" demo?