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Comment by intellectronica | Hacker News Reader

So basically he didn't get anything but #6 (facebook) and #10 (which is more of an insider joke than a prediction) right. Remember this next time you read Yegge's rants.

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Remember this next time you read Yegge's rants.

Well, even deep understanding doesn't imply the ability to predict, unless chance plays little role -- a stipulation which is manifestly not the case, here.

Edit: grammar

Deep understanding should discourage one from making predictions, though.

Depends on your goal. If your goal is to avoid making statements that are wrong, then sure. If your goal is to be interesting and say provocative things, maybe not so much. :)

facebook was already out in 2004, and everyone was on myspace.

Good point. That wasn't hard to predict.

I'm surprised to see that I'm getting a negative response to this comment. Would someone care to explain what makes it so controversial?

Well, you're committing an ad homenim, for one thing... this article could be completely, 100% wrong, and it has no affect on the correctness of his next one.

But I also didn't downvote you, so I can't speak for those that did.

I don't think he offended Yegge in any way. It's a valid point to make when someone goes to make inaccurate predictions: you have to take that into consideration for future articles. But well, this is Hacker News these days.

I agree with you, it certainly makes sense in my opinion to question the credibility of predictions based on a history of bad predictions.

For example, I am ridiculously bad at estimating how much time implementing features / fixing bugs would take. Most of the time I'm really off, at least by a factor of 2. Surely my manager should take this fact into consideration when asking me how much time something would take me when planning the timeline/schedule (he does, in fact).

> It's a valid point to make when someone goes to make inaccurate predictions: you have to take that into consideration for future articles.

Nope, that's a logical fallacy. Lots of people do it, yes. I'm guilty of it myself. But that doesn't mean that it's correct.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

It is not a logical fallacy nor ad hominem to take into account the number of times someone has been incorrect about a specific subject matter in order to estimate how much one should weigh the probability of said individual being correct on future related matters. That is, unless one has complete and correct information about the future.

I wouldn't call this an ad hominem attack. You've got to be able to say that someone is wrong (even that someone is often wrong) without being considered to be attacking them personally.

You can say someone is wrong, sure. That's not the issue. The issue is disregarding what someone says because of previous things they've said.

> So basically he didn't get anything but #6 (facebook) and #10 (which is more of an insider joke than a prediction) right

Okay, you're good...

> Remember this next time you read Yegge's rants.

Logical fallacy.

Why logical fallacy? I didn't say "ergo Yegge is stupid" or "don't trust a word the man says". I just meant that it's worth keeping this in mind when he engages in future-telling again. FWIW I do enjoy reading his essays, even when I think they're wrong.

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