Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Now that it is what it is, any idiot can look back and say it was obvious what would happen. Far more people got it wrong 15-20 years ago, and I guess its good for a chuckle (especially since this particular writer was so condescending) - but hindsight is as perfect as foresight is rare.
Its not about having some kind of crystal ball, though. It's about giving credence to people who understand the components and can, in their mind at least, put them together long before they can be put together in material form. It would help any confusion of course if visionaries could explain their visions with more conviction and convincing detail. But in that case though, the writer was just completely and perfectly wrong about everything.
And that's in part due to (as you say) that conventional tendency. The point here is that it's a tendency based in not giving credence to the most competent visions, not just in natural incapacity. Even the objections which haven't yet been totally disproven ('no hypergovernment') will of course have to fall also, just to satisfy statistical idealism.
And are laypeople today really going to start arguing with a David Deutch or a Peter Shor? I think Stoll must have hit mid-age and that set his thoughts back to 1983, in which state of mind he penned a treasure trove's worth of postdated humor. Nobody could actually get all the answers wrong - that is, nobody, but a guy who really knew all the answers.
-Stevertigo "And carried on without a comma...