It was in the local newspaper a couple days later. The newspaper said the car ran into the train, and not the other way around. I was boggled. I learned later that this was my first, surprisingly on-the-nose, encounter with the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. (To this day, I still believe some of the things I read. I have no idea why.)
I read a lot of articles, and I tend to assume the writers are knowledgeable and have done their research. But occasionally I read an article about a subject I know a lot about, and often it will be completely riddled with errors. I guess the problem is that writers write articles about such a wide variety of subjects that they don't have the time to really delve into each one of them, and I know from experience that if I try to write about something I don't really know about, the text will indeed be riddled with errors. Write with enough confidence, and you'll convince your readers that you know what you're doing. Except the very few who are very knowledgeable about the subject.
Maybe the safe assumption is to assume every article contains at least a few serious errors?
90% of new things will fail. Therefore you can just predict every new thing will fail, and 90% of the time you’ll be right. That’s a pretty good way to feel good about yourself, but it’s not very useful. Anybody can do that. Instead, can you pick the 10% that will succeed?
Huh, never really seen it this way before. I tend to be a bit quick to predict failures myself. Maybe I should spend more time trying to predict successes.
The more I hear about Bitcoin, the less I understand it. Probably doesn’t help that I don’t know what a blockchain is either. I’m going to go Google it!
Despite all that - and I didn't even need to exaggerate! - bitcoin has still not failed, if failure means it’s gone. It's very much still around.
That’s because I forgot one essential reason bitcoin has survived:
Because people really, really, really want it to.
If there’s one lesson I learned over and over in the last ten years, that’s it. Projects don’t survive merely because they are good ideas; many good ideas get cancelled or outcompeted. Ask anyone who works at an overfunded tech company.
Similarly, movements don’t die just because they are, in every conceivable way, stupid. Projects live or die because of the energy people do or do not continue to put into them.
I read a lot of articles, and I tend to assume the writers are knowledgeable and have done their research. But occasionally I read an article about a subject I know a lot about, and often it will be completely riddled with errors. I guess the problem is that writers write articles about such a wide variety of subjects that they don't have the time to really delve into each one of them, and I know from experience that if I try to write about something I don't really know about, the text will indeed be riddled with errors. Write with enough confidence, and you'll convince your readers that you know what you're doing. Except the very few who are very knowledgeable about the subject.
Maybe the safe assumption is to assume every article contains at least a few serious errors?
Huh, never really seen it this way before. I tend to be a bit quick to predict failures myself. Maybe I should spend more time trying to predict successes.
The more I hear about Bitcoin, the less I understand it. Probably doesn’t help that I don’t know what a blockchain is either. I’m going to go Google it!
This was an excellent perspective to read. I’m definitely among the Bitcoin uneducated.
GO, READUP, GO:
💯🍃😉🦋😘🌸💓👑🏆