Comment by rtpg

Here's two possible set of predictions:

- a list of predictions that are entirely wrong, from A-to-Z, and are not even resembling what ends up happening

- a list of predictions that are wrong, but where the underlying points are in fact interesting and have some predictive value, and it's just the "last step" that is wrong

For example, one person might say "oh it's raining in Dallas therefore I should buy some TI stock". And we'll say for sake of argument that they say that even though it's nice and sunny in Dallas at the moment.

Another person says "Oh its raining a lot in Idaho and that is going to increase potato yields and therefore I will buy McDonalds stocks cuz fries will be cheaper". In this hypothetical it turns out McDonalds buys all their potatoes from ... Kansas or something instead (and it's a specific kind of potato in a completely separate market)... but Idaho potato yields _did in fact go up_.

An even more straightforward point: the iphone 3GS comes out in 2010, people are very hyped, someone looks at how RIM _still_ hasn't gotten its shit together and declares "RIM isn't going to to be able to stay profitable 18 months from now, they're gonna have their lunch eaten".

Turns out that RIM still made a healthy profit in 2010. and 2011. And 2012. 2013 was their first loss in a while... and then it wasn't until 2014 that they really got kicked in the face.

The prediction was early, overestimated how long of a tail RIM would experience, but how wrong was it? Was the prediction of some utility?

I'm saying this... it would be helpful if _some_ more AI companies flamed out. In some sense he does himself no favors by focusing on the corps with the biggest war chest instead of the various AI companies that spend a bunch to go nowhere fast and then have just disappeared.