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>Bitcoin is a flash in the pan fad.

Huh. I swear I've heard such comments before..

    "This internet thing isn't going to go anywhere"
          -- Most companies, early 1990's

    "No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame."
          -- CmdrTaco, the original iPod release

    "I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year."
          -- Prentice Hall editor, 1957

    "I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones."
          -- Linus Torvalds
Keep a bit more of an open mind, hm? Things have an interesting way of catching on.


This is the "they laughed at Galieo" Gambit http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Galileo_gambit It's a lot older than your examples and is a reliable crutch for quacks.

Yes, most important advances are initially dismissed. But almost all things that are initially dismissed are not important advances. You cannot infer importance from initial dismissal. Dismissal does not in itself make anything more likely to be important.


Indeed. The only thing this proves is that people are really, really bad at determining what things are going to catch on and which aren't.

Which is why I take such "Feh! Bitcoin is a fad!" statements as the uninformed nonsense that they are.


The only thing this proves is that people are really, really bad at determining what things are going to catch on and which aren't.

No, it really doesn't. It just proves that in some particular cases, some particular people were bad at determining that.


CmdrTaco's doesn't fit the rest. He wasn't predicting anything, he just found the iPod lame. And it was, to him and many of us.




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