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Comment by emp17344 | Hacker News Reader

Why is Zitron’s repute evaluated entirely on the basis of failed predictions? Predictions are incredibly hard. AI enthusiasts and thought leaders have made so many demonstrably incorrect predictions it’s hard to keep track. Based on this metric, Altman and Amodei should never be taken seriously again.

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Years back John C. Dvorak talked about predictions. He's was being ridiculed for his comment that there was "no evidence that computer users would want to use a mouse" (which was sort of true at the time). One of his point was that he had made a crazy amount of predictions on various topics, some came true, many didn't. People just remember the one you got right, and the ones you got horribly wrong.

Ed Zitron is just one AI crash away from being known as the guy who saw this coming. Everything else he has said can be completely wrong, he just needs to be somewhat correct on a minor crash.

Correctly predicting nine out of the last five recessions.

> Ed Zitron is just one AI crash away from being known as the guy who saw this coming. Everything else he has said can be completely wrong, he just needs to be somewhat correct on a minor crash.

That's the theory, but I feel like enough people have heard of him by now to be aware of the numbers game being played.

I don’t agree with your conclusion. It’s like Michael Burry, he’s gotten 10 of the last 2 economic crashes right.

How many people in the financial space recognized Burry's name before 2008?

Pretty much none, but he’s been saying the sky is falling for the last decade.

Well yes, that's the point. Burry had his success early and was not notable before that. Zitron has been outputting a continuous stream of bearish sentiment that hasn't come to fruition, from the moment anyone recognized the name.

And even then, people are starting to notice that Burry's gone a while without a noticeable success.

Have you ever listened to Zitron speak? He's not exactly the type to hedge his predictions behind careful language about how hard predictions are. He makes every one of these predictions with absolute confidence and conviction.

So does everyone else, including prominent AI enthusiasts and tech CEOs. And most of those predictions are wrong, because predictions are really hard.

And we're used to insulting and making fun of the prominent members of those circles too, see: "Scam Altman", the large variety of jokes about Musk's timelines, comments about Dario waking up in a cold sweat whenever a powerful new open weight model drops, the "AGI achieved" meme etc.

Hyperbolic as those descriptions are, it’s not like they’re not sourced from reality. Sam Altman’s reputation in SV is well-established; Musk promised the roadster what, a decade ago? These guys preach a promised land of milk and honey and so many hear lap it up like dogs.

Both can be bad, and I think people take issue with intentionally projecting false or irresponsible confidence (lying).

Zitron twists and misreports a lot of facts where they should know better.

CEO hypemen knowingly conflate Ambitions for certainty

But this doesn't excuse Ed making a living from awful predictions, surely?

If you realise you're bad at something it seems immoral to keep charging people for it.

So Altman and Amodei should retire?

Altman and Amodei do not make a living out of that. They make a living out of being CEOs of OpenAI and Anthropic. Whether they are doing well in this position is a different question, but that has little to do with their public predictions.

What? The only reason their companies make so much money is BECAUSE they make their predictions about AI replacing every job soon. A couple months ago it seemed is was their ONLY job.

The only reason Anthropic and OpenAI make money is by saying AI will replace workers? Not from selling access to their models?

Neither company is remotely close to making a profit yet. To the extent people at those companies make money, it is unrealized capital appreciation driven by successively higher valuations during successive funding rounds.

In short, financially they are still running on hype. Quite a lot of operations are being paid out of capital, not revenues. So they have to keep selling a dream to keep raising capital. Next stop: IPO.

How do you think they convince people, esp. CEOs to buy access to their models?

Nah they do, Sam does nothing but lie in an effort to keep up share price. Selling people an impossible future is the job of OpenAI CEO. If tokens were profitable it'd be selling tokens, but they aren't so the only other option is selling ridiculous predictions to investors

I was thinking about this as I walked earlier.

People who "make predictions" are like psychics. Unless those predications are uncannily good – in which case we call that person an analyst – we can assume that the person is either wilfully lying, or that they're stupid.

Ed's predictions have so far failed to come true. I don't think he's stupid (but I might be wrong). That leaves me feeling like he's the psychic who knows exactly what they're doing. They're telling a gullible audience a story they want to hear because it's a nice way to earn a living.

Comparing him to the CEOs of companies who produce incredibly useful products used by millions is facile nonsense.

> they're telling a gullible audience a story they want to hear because it's a nice way to earn a living.

Sure sounds a bit like Altman though ultimately, the audience being VCs

The difference being that the story he's telling is "you'll make money" and he's usually right.

Citation needed

Ah that's why they're losing billions of dollars a month...

I ask again, have you ever heard Zitron speak? The way he presents himself has absolutely nothing in common with any tech CEO or AI enthusiast I have ever seen.

The difference is that Altman and Amodei are doing something else besides making predictions that turn out to be wrong. Most obviously, they're running tech companies that are changing the way entire industries operate. We put a lot of weight on that in evaluating them.

What else is Zitron doing that he could be evaluated on, besides making predictions that turn out to be wrong?

Predictions being hard is what makes them valuable as a check on insight and accuracy!

Ok, but it also means we shouldn’t immediately discredit people who make incorrect short-term predictions, because those are really hard and no individual person consistently gets them right. You can worship at the altar of short-term prediction if you really want, but if you want to be logically consistent, that entails never taking anybody seriously ever.

He speaks with all the conviction of a classic "Fire and Brimstone" preacher. Someone for whom the only metric is stirring emotion, not accuracy of statement.

Apparently that's necessary and sufficient for getting views. In these interesting times when the future is very uncertain we like to hear people speaking with certainty about the future. Especially people who appear to not be paid for it.

Can he predict the future? No. Can he pretend to be able to predict the future? Yes.

The first time I heard of Ed Zitron was 18 or so years ago when he wrote a review of the Darkfall MMORPG. He tore it to pieces, but as someone who played the game I could tell he had never actually played it, which is what the game developers also claimed when they reviewed his logged in session, that he did nothing for 30 minutes then logged out (I might be a bit off on the details, it has been awhile). He’s always been someone who wont let the truth get in the way of his success. I really hope people start valuing accuracy over confidence

So...Ellsworth Toohey?

I think it's fair to say predictions that Altman and Amodei make should never be taken at face value, as well as Zitron. That's fine. But that doesn't have any bearing on Dan Luu's claims. This feels like an example of what he talks about in the article when saying that people respond to his claims by pointing at something entirely different. That is to say, whether AI enthusiasts make silly predictions doesn't mean that these companies aren't going to be profitable, or that any of Zitron's predictions are any good either.

What else would his repute be based on? Maybe telling retrospective truth? Per the article, he does terribly by that metric as well.

I thought in the post Ed was being evaluated based on all his predictions, and it turned out all of them were wrong.

Most people will read the post as going over all the falsifiable predictions and none of them panning out, since after the chronological prediction list it says "After this point, most further predictions that I saw were either non-falsifiable or resolve in the future".

If Dan is reading maybe he can clarify?

The list is chronological; as it nears the present, the predictions actually refer to the future, and are thus not yet resolved.

Yes it's chronological but no it doesn't have unresolved items nearer the present:

The last 5 ones in the list read "Wrong" and seem reasonable. The first thing after the list is "After this point, most further predictions that I saw were either non-falsifiable or resolve in the future".

Isn't that pretty much his whole thing, confidently telling us what will happen? Of course his reputation should suffer if his predictions are wrong, as should those of the others whose correctness : confidence ratio is too low. (But if their reputation/power/relevance mainly comes from things other than their punditry, we can't really stop 'taking them seriously' altogether.)

Because Zitron is specifically making a name for himself as a critic making bearish predictions; Altman and Amodei may have made unreasonably bullish predictions, but they've also done other relevant things like e.g. being involved in the actual development of the models.

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