>You can do that, but then you’re no longer discussing his predictions. You’re discussing your predictions, and your own positioning.
Depends if you care about the "prediction" part or if you care about the assessment of the situation (regardless of date).
If someone in 2000 said "the subprime mortgages market is a bubble and will blow no later than 2003", they got the prediction wrong, but their assessment would be right.
Yes, but for should care if it's 2 years vs 50 years. That's why timeline are important for predictions.
Anyone can predict lots of things that given enough time will eventually be true. "The sun will burn out", "humans as a species will no longer exist", "the US will collapse". That's useless. But those become meaningful if they will happen within the next three years.
It's the reason the saying "the market can be irrational longer than your can stay solvent" has such important meaning.
> Predicting things 5 years too early is often as useless as not predicting anything.
It depends on what type of thing you are predicting and why. Even something as simple as "Enron will implode" in 1995 has very different levels of usefulness if you are planning to short a stock versus figuring out what stock to buy and hold in your retirement account.
>Predicting things 5 years too early is often as useless as not predicting anything.
I dont think Zitron has predicted anything 5 years too early. 1 or 2 at the outside is probably the limit.
I remember during the original internet boom the people who were given the most shit were the ones who predicted the bubble popping a year or two early.
Zitron fits quite neatly in this category: most of the predictions of his Ive seen that are "wrong" are things which could still happen and things where he gave wrong timelines.
Realistically identifying a bubble and the stupidity associated with it just requires an ability to do the research and see through bullshit. identifying even roughly when it will pop really needs a crystal ball. Mass human delusions do not collapse in a predictable way.
My recollection is a couple years before it popped everybody (except tech CEOs going public or investing tens of millions in dog food delivery infrastructure) was in disbelief it hadn't happened yet
yeah I also remember a lot of talk about the bubble for 18 months to 2 years before it actually popped.
i think we're in that (quite long) stage with AI right now where most halfway smart people "know" but they're still invested due to the greater fool theory and still talking their book.
The subprime market changed quite a bit in size and how much was securitized in the run up to 2007, so not sure a prediction in 2000 for a 2003 event would have been easily transferred to what happened later. Would really come down to what specifically the prediction was based on for it to be a bubble in 2000.
Excellent point. We can look at the reasons for the prediction as well as the result in assessing its value. It seems hard to do in practice unless you are evaluated by someone who makes better predictions, but it would be interesting.
> If someone in 2000 said "the subprime mortgages market is a bubble and will blow no later than 2003", they got the prediction wrong, but their assessment would be right.
It doesn't make sense to split it though. Their assessment is that it's a bubble AND that it will blow no later than 2003. It's a single statement.
And it matters, because if all you're doing is saying there's an AI bubble then it's harder to prove you wrong but you also don't stand out and won't get a lot of credit for it. A very large number of people are saying the same thing as you, so who cares.
People like Zitron stand out because they go further than others and make detailed statements. Which happen to be wrong.
Depends if you care about the "prediction" part or if you care about the assessment of the situation (regardless of date).
If someone in 2000 said "the subprime mortgages market is a bubble and will blow no later than 2003", they got the prediction wrong, but their assessment would be right.