HN Predictions for 2021 (2020) | Hacker News Reader

HN Predictions for 2021 (2020)

news.ycombinator.com

64 pointsviraptor34 comments

This sort of exercise tends to have a mix bag of successful predictions (infinite monkeys typing Shakespeare and all) but it surprised me that the rate of successful predictions in that thread is so close to 0%.

In their defense, likely predictions are boring.

For example who cares if you predict that …

- Google will continue to be the top search engine

- Apple will release a new iPhone

- Xi Jinping will continue as president

- Biden will continue as president

Biden will continue calling his second the president.

> * Accelerating inflation perhaps leading high single digits low double digits in the next several years.

> * Stocks continue to rise as a function of inflation.

> * Full self drivering cars are no closer.

> * Reddit continues to decline in quality but no clear alternative emerges.

> * Large chance of abnormal oil price volatility.

Seems like this guy got a lot of them right

> * Accelerating inflation perhaps leading high single digits low double digits in the next several years.

Didn't the US inflation rate went up to around 6% during 2021? Even though that's quite the hike, I wouldn't classify 6% or even 7% as "high single digits/low double digits", unless the definition of "high single digits" is now "greater than 5%"

> * Stocks continue to rise as a function of inflation.

The S&P500 continued to grow constantly as it has been doing for the past decade.

> * Full self drivering cars are no closer.

Is this really a prediction?

> * Reddit continues to decline in quality but no clear alternative emerges.

Is reddit really in decline, though? Doesn't seem like it. In fact, arguably things improved a lot in the past year.

> * Large chance of abnormal oil price volatility.

Does this actually mean anything? Also, there was a price drop at the start of the year due to a drop in demand (lockdowns and all) and since then price returned to the same point it was last year. Doesn't sound like it's either abnormal or volatile.

I can address the point about oil. We seem to have reached peak oil already so the expectation is for the price of oil to go down. Prices going up suggest market manipulation by squeezing supply by opec etc.

To add, he made a lot of other predictions as well that don't seem to have panned out.

If you count housing, which the official US figures don't, we are in high single digits area.

And if you count building supplies and groceries, it's north of 10. The numbers are cooked, and the rate of cooking is increasing.

To the extent building supplies increase rent (new housing is a small portion of overall housing, so 2x spikes up and down in one component's price doesn't drive rent up 2x in one year), it is reflected. Groceries are included in CPI.

They count housing through rent, to avoid speculative asset pricing stuff.

>Is reddit really in decline, though? Doesn't seem like it. In fact, arguably things improved a lot in the past year.

That depends on your quality metrics, and, of course, personal taste. To me, the continuous branching off of more and more arcane subreddits means two things:

- Your own voice bears more weight as the new arena is smaller at its inception

- The overall quality of discussions is getting blander as not every tiny niche sub can keep ace thinkers

So it appears that you can't have it both ways - fostering a great discussion atmosphere where, at the same time, every voice will be equally considered.

>Doesn't sound like it's either abnormal or volatile.

The WTI price drop was the 3rd largest in 20 years and briefly saw prices return to a level from 18 years ago. I couldn't have predicted that.

A drop and going back up is the definition of volatility.

If it just dropped slowly or went up slowly the volatility would be low

I found this too, I checked the top posts and it seemed as people were almost unanimously incorrect. These were likely "good" predictions too, it just shows how much of it is guesswork I suppose.

The year-of-the-Linux-desktop one came true for me. After a decade on macOS I moved back to ion3’s successor, i3wm. Sweet, minimalist joy.

For me too actually! I totally gave up the Mac and went to Ubuntu Budgie. Never been happier!

I've been running Linux for a decade at home and work computers and it's awesome. I can't stand mac os or windows now, guess that's the only downside.

> * WFH and quarantine continues until the summer

Amusing just how continuously shortsighted we are about this whole thing. I remember being sent some in 2020 thinking "oh, just WFM for two weeks". Here we are, two years later. Never could have imagined.

> Here we are, two years later. Never could have imagined.

I have to agree, that was very disheartening. Nevertheless, the writing was on the wall right on the first week of the very first lockdown, when so many people made it their point to not only reject complying with lockdowns and any form of basic personal higiene and health precautions but also be very militant and contrarian about violating public health guidelines.

It's hard to contain an epidemic when a sizeable part of the population is outright militant in contributing to it's spread.

Alas, it has become quite clear that whether the pandemic will continue or not has virtually zero correlation to what a certain segment of the US electorate does or does not do.

Hopefully it was always clear that a global pandemic was never going to be driven one way or another by a segment of the US...

I remember making predictions in early Summer 2020 that the pandemic would last until the Winter. My friends and coworkers thought I was nuts.

When lockdown started, I said in a company meeting that there was no way the general public will handle a lockdown, it will fail, and 3 years from now (it was Feb 2020 at the time) we will simply give up as a society and start to just live with a partially ignored and highly dangerous fatal airborne virus. I was optimistic, it looks like society is giving up at the 2 year point. The pandemic is as bad if not worse than the beginning, and yet what are we doing? We're relaxing everything... Everyone at my company said I was depressingly stupid to think that. When I quit last spring, I mentioned to them that I was right and they were stupid.

morpheos137 did a bit too well https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25608034

Yeah! That was pretty accurate. BUT, after all those well thought comments then they say:

> 20% chance of well attested "alien" contact

There have been 0 well attested contacts in 5k years and we're gonna have a 20% chance for it to happen in just 1 year?

The inflation, stocks, BTC and Trump/Biden ones were spot on though.

And then there’re aliens scratching their heads: “These guys still can’t decipher our insert particle name signals?”

Single year predictions are uninteresting. People either predict "more of the same, but that thing that is almost happening happens" and get it right or wild predictions that are all wrong.

A lot can change in one's life in a single year, but almost nothing can change in a society.

So where’s the thread for (equally bad) predictions for 2022?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29746236

Mine didn't work out, 55 wasn't factored on quantum computer using Shor :(

1, 5, 11, 55

Not as impressive when a human does it. We'll get there.

Did we already have a thread for 2022 predictions?

yes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29746236

(2020) :)

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