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What consensus*-defying beliefs did you hold that turned out to be right, and what consensus-defying predictions would you care to make now?
*in the most loosely defined sense--I just mean something that seems to go against the general public mood, not something you alone out of 8 billion people had a unique insight over.
Over the past few weeks, /r/technology has voted to the top numerous threads outlining deep-rooted issues with Amazon, from its trillion dollar market cap contraction, 11k layoffs, workers strikes and union-busting, and more recently, its Alexa division that's supposed to lose $10b this year.
Regarding the last headline specifically, I'm no superforecaster, but I've always avoided voice assistants and found the rest of the world's apparent eager adoption strange. I think my avoidance is potentially irrational: I generally distrust always-on-mics, but there is massive legal and reputational risk for any large tech firm to spy without court orders and there isn't a clear profit incentive to do it; my impression that the tech is clunky and dumb is probably 5-10 years out of date given all the improvements since; I also haven't identified a clear personal use case, but since I've never used it, I may well be missing out.
Now, there are plenty of goods and services that I don't consume that offer real utility to many other people. But I'd always thought voice assistants overhyped because I couldn't relate to just how much utility they were able to provide the average consumer and how profitable they are to their makers, considering how prevalent they are--new phones goading you into turning them on, perennial sales on voice gadgets, the cultural relevance of Alexas/Siris/Google Assistants/Cortanas/Bixbys etc. Like, I find the similarly free Maps app to be 100x more useful, and yet no one tries to shove Maps down your throat, maybe because they don't need to do it considering how useful it is. And so, while I don't share the fairly obvious undercurrent of anti-Amazon schadenfreude on /r/technology, the news that Alexa is actually failing badly and has always failed badly as a business investment comports with my preferences, and that's reassuring.
I recognize it's super hard to actually predict the future with real stakes (say, a financial investment), or else we'd all be billionaires. And left ignored are the many more incorrect forecasts that I/we don't write/talk about. Still, it's fun to casually celebrate moral wins, and I think useful to constantly tinker with your mental models based on new data points, especially when it relates to things that you strongly disagree with the rest of the world on. So what examples can you think of?
P.S. A couple more random and completely inconsequential things that I turned out to be right about:
About a year before COVID, someone very senior at work pointed to Peloton as an example of an exceptional business model, saying that it was able to earn a huge premium thanks to the self-actualization provided by in-store sales reps who supposedly had sophisticated scripts that effectively bucketed leads based on demographics data etc. that resulted in outsized closing rates. I was skeptical, but its valuation kept on skyrocketing so decided to believe it. It now seems my skepticism was warranted.
I've always held a grudge against Grubhub since back when it was the dominant market share leader in food deliveries circa 5-7 years ago. Can't remember the exact reasons why, but it was probably a combination of what I felt to be dishonest or dark pattern UI/UX for its end users, stuff like defaulting to outrageous tipping % to trick/shame users, or applying that tipping % to the grand total instead of before taxes and fees, or a sanctimonious interview given by its CEO. I'd always thought its dominance was unsustainable because of these red flags, and did enjoy a healthy dose of anti-Grubhub schadenfreude as its valuation cratered and market share dwindled.
And a couple of consensus-defying (again, very loosely defined) predictions:
Asians in the US will go reliably majority conservative by the 2030 midterms (okay, it's not a crazy claim, but most pundits focus on Hispanics and Blacks shifting away from Dems, and largely ignore Asians; also, I've thought Asians were overdue to vote GOP for probably a decade now, which probably actually means my prediction has been very poor considering this hasn't materialized yet).
Blended salads will go mainstream by 2050--that is, people will blend up what is very obviously originally a salad based on the ingredients (and so different from today's veggie smoothies) and drink it for efficiency's sake.
I think I was one of the first people to say that being outside was probably not only safe but one of the best places to be during the pandemic. I was also one of the first to argue that the lockdowns and masks would likely go on for a lot longer than most people realized. I also predicted the reversal of most remote work.
Current consensus defying beliefs:
current efforts to fight climate change are causing more harm than good. (75%)
congestion pricing is very good (99.5%)
there might not be a recession within the next year (50%)
Could you expand on this? Curious as to what exactly you mean by this
Climate change is only expected to harm world GDP by about 4% by 2100 (the worst estimates put it at 20%), and the range of likely temperature increases has narrowed recently, for the better. A lot of people talk as though humanity is going to go extinct. Young people are even choosing not to have kids because of it.
In my work and personal life lately, I have seen an absolute take over environmentalist ideology. It produces huge amount of bureaucratic waste and endless non-sensical decisions. There are endless complex government rebates and regulations designed to fight climate change. I meet so many people whose work is somehow related to some kind of government program to fight climate change. I haven't tried to quantify it. But I find it hard to believe it isn't going to greatly exceed 4% of GDP in the next 77 years.
It seems to be taking on some features of religion, where people want to endure painful sacrifices to show their allegiance to a social cause. Just in the last few years, ridiculous and pointless inconveniences have been imposed and more are coming.
We have banned plastic straws and replaced them with soggy paper ones.
We have banned plastic grocery bags and replaced them with paper bags that rip and dig into your skin.
We have have banned clear garbage bags to make sure people are recycling and composting even though this has been shown for some time to be wasteful.
In my city there explicitly deliberate attempts to increase congestion and reduce parking to discourage people from driving.
They want to ban gas engines by 2030.
There's even talk of banning oil fired furnaces.
All of this in a country which will likely benefit from climate change. A carbon tax (which we have already) would probably be beneficial, but instead, we get a hodge podge of minimally helpful and maximally inconvenient regulations.
Some of these may seem like minor inconveniences, but they are a sign that people are focused on showy sacrifice and not actual progress. This attitude pervades the entire movement and means it is probably going to be net harmful by its very nature.
There is no economic or rational thinking driving this. Every decision seems to begin and end with whether or not it helps the environment. There is no talk of trade-offs or how to most efficiently help the environment.
The government is using climate change as an excuse to meddle in every aspect of our lives for the worse. In the U.S., the Federal Reserve has lately been making up nonsense about accounting for climate risks in its regulation of the financial sector.
This is all very dangerous because something which has a far bigger effect on our future prosperity than climate change is very small changes to the rate of economic growth. A 4% decrease in GDP by 2100 is equivalent to a 0.05 percentage point reduction in economic growth.
But environmentalism has become something opposed to progress itself. It views our future as one where everyone's quality of life is worse. The enormous convenience of plastic and personal vehicles will be gone.
Do you mind if I link this from the Heat Pump culture war post? It's everything I was trying to say but better.
I have so many graphs of absurdities like Germany's "sustainable energy revolution" fueled by burning wood chips and brown coal, and all I can do is gesture in helpless rage at how evil I find it all.
Go ahead.
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