Seen that for everything from 3D printing and AI to fusion and superconductors.
Also for things that do pan out, they sometimes comes with unforeseen negative consequences.*
As a result, it’s hard to get excited about ”great new thing” these days.
* e.g. the internet; there was so much optimism over it in the 90s … no one foresaw its use to track and manipulate the public on a massive scale, the damage to mental health social media has afflicted, … etc.
I just approach “next big thing” with caution these days. It will either go nowhere or actually work but will have unforeseen fallout that we have to deal with / live with.
(neither of those was me, for clarity)
you gain nothing bashing new tech that doesn't pan out
If it doesn't matter either way, why be pessimistic - especially if you're a tech enthusiast - as most people on HackerNews ought to be.
I would be wasting attention on it. I kind of wish that the front page isn’t flooded with so much speculative news - when it reaches a certain level it becomes noise drowning out the signal. Tell me when you have definitive results.
That's extremely funny, thank you :)
It also makes a very valid point about human nature: we are resistant to acceptance of news that will change our worldview to the point that when presented with evidence of something new our first reaction seems to be to go into denial.
I went from feeling this had a 5% probability of being true to 35% or so in the past few days. In the end that belief is going to reach 0.00001% or 99.99999%; but until it settles in one of those places it's going to drift like it's being blown by the wind.
And when it's real-- do we get something useful from it in 5 years or never? It's taken us decades to get significant high temperature superconductor applications.
In the end, there's so much uncertainty, and until it all settles out we can either be ambivalent or cheer for a side.
There is no guarantee that "if this is real" that there's a workable path to current densities and manufacturing ease that leads to commercialization-- ever.
And if there's a path, it's difficult to predict how long following that path will take.
YBCO dates to 1986 and requires much less of a cooling installation than the superconductors that are in use today. We are just reaching commercial use in the past few years...