
It'll Never Work (1997) - rndn
https://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/neverwrk.htm
======
jeffreyrogers
And here's one from Carl Sagan for a nice counterpoint:

"The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are
laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton,
they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

~~~
simonh
To be fair, Columbus did underestimate the size of the Earth by about a factor
of 2, and that was over 1500 years after Eratosthenes had calculated it to a
reasonable degree of accuracy. A lot of the geographers laughing at him did so
for that reason, not because they thought the Earth was flat. To his dying day
he thought he'd sailed half way round the world to the East Indies. That's why
we call those islands the West Indies, and call native american's Indians to
this day. If the Americas hadn't been there, the expedition would have all
died when the supplies ran out. Columbus wasn't right, he was lucky.

~~~
melling
Larry Page told his advisor that he thought it would take 2 weeks to index the
Internet. His advisor knew it would take a lot longer but didn't say anything.

What were the names of those geographers?

~~~
dragonwriter
> What were the names of those geographers?

Well, among them, Amerigo Vespucci, another Italian working for the Spanish
crown. Contemporary of Columbus, traveling at the same time as Columbus later
voyages. He's the one that first identified, or at least popularized, that the
lands Columbus was still insisting were the East Indies were a "New World".
Has a couple continents named after him.

------
mytochar
It's nice to see that not all of the claims made that turned out to be false
were in the negative.

e.g:

 _Automobiles will start to decline almost as soon as the last shot is fired
in World War II. The name of Igor Sikorsky will be as well known as Henry Ford
's, for his helicopter will all but replace the horseless carriage as the new
means of popular transportation. Instead of a car in every garage, there will
be a helicopter.... These 'copters' will be so safe and will cost so little to
produce that small models will be made for teenage youngsters. These tiny
'copters, when school lets out, will fill the sky as the bicycles of our youth
filled the prewar roads. - Harry Bruno, aviation publicist, 1943._

Furthermore, I notice that's by an aviation publicist; and that just happens
to lend to my other comment / question:

How many of these people were paid to have the stance that they had?

~~~
MichaelGG
Isn't the big miss there that they turned out not to be that cheap, nor that
safe? Living in a city with bad traffic, I'd love to get a small copter.

~~~
vladiliescu
But if everybody else had a small copter too, wouldn't the air traffic be just
as bad?

~~~
kardos
Not really, because you have another dimension to expand into, so you can
imagine adding as many levels as you need. Also you avoid all the obstacles
that cars have to navigate at ground level (rivers, buildings, trees, etc).

On the other hand, there's some work to be done to define good copter "rules
of the road". A simple solution is to say you can only go north at lvl1, east
at lvl2, south lvl3, west lvl4. That would pretty much eliminate lateral
collisions, so then you've only got level changes and takeoffs/landings to
solve and it's done.

On the other other hand, there are bad drivers, there'll surely be bad pilots.
Perhaps self-driving copters is the answer!

~~~
PakG1
Given that airports require air traffic control to coordinate all the takeoffs
and landings of airplanes, and the number of airplanes would no doubt be much
smaller than the number of helicopters that would fly in a similar physical
area at mass scale if helicopters replaced cars... I don't know how much the
increased dimensions would really help. Airplanes trying to make their own
decisions at airports would be disastrous, even if all the pilots agreed on
what constituted right of way.

~~~
jacquesm
Birds (in spite of, or rather _because of_ their birdbrains) seem to be doing
ok at this.

~~~
mkeener
I think birds fare about as well as an aircraft when striking other aircraft.
Doesn't really seem comparable.

~~~
jacquesm
They fare infinitely better. Imagine the kind of traffic that you see around a
large tree at dusk that birds use for sleeping around a major airport. The
carnage would be beyond your wildest nightmares.

~~~
mkeener
I think I didn't communicate clearly. What I meant to say is that I think
birds fare as well when birds strike aircraft (jets, helicopters) as when
aircraft strike other aircraft. There's a measurable difference between a 200g
soft thing bumping into another one, as opposed to a multi-ton rigid structure
full of high explosive liquid and fast moving things having a little tiff.

I get what your saying about the organized chaos, but the risk slight
accidental impact imposes isn't even close.

Would be awesome, though, gotta say.

~~~
jacquesm
The whole trick is in avoiding the collisions in the first place which birds
manage with considerable grace, even when there are a lot of them. I live in
the middle of a bird sanctuary and there are on a good day a few million of
them nearby and to see them take off in enormous flocks without any mishap or
central control is extremely impressive.

The obvious fact is that we engineer our aircraft (especially choppers) in a
way that is totally contrary to the principles of flight (which penalizes
weight and power-to-weight even more) but it's a direct function of the fact
that we'd like to be on board as well and we're a lot heavier than the
heaviest birds. All that machinery is our technological workaround for not
having wings and it comes at a significant price: that as soon as anything at
all goes wrong we are painfully reminded that the sky is not our natural
element. So there are very few ways that we manage to recover from any mid-air
collision and the speed for fixed wing aircraft and the potential energy of
rotary craft pretty much guarantees destruction and death or at a minimum
serious injury of all occupants in case of accidents.

There may be some way in which we could re-visit flying designed from the
ground up with recovery from collision and failure of (sub)systems in mind. I
wonder what form it would take.

~~~
PakG1
_we are painfully reminded that the sky is not our natural element._

Isn't that also something else? There are evolutionary characteristics in bird
brains that enable them to react the way they need to survive in the air? Even
with the best machine learning algorithms, would we really be able to
replicate that intelligence within a single generation? Maybe, stranger things
have happened, but I doubt it. Certainly, I doubt human pilots would be able
to replicate it, I think AI would have a better chance, but that's still
scary.

~~~
jacquesm
I saw a 3D flocking demo in the 80's that looked eerily natural. Mindblowing
at the time and the whole thing revolved around only 4 parameters and some
simple formulas. Emergent behaviour at its finest so replicating that would
not be all that hard. Getting the machinery in place to obey the signals is a
lot harder.

------
Patient0
Can anyone explain the flaw in Bickerton's reasoning? It's not obvious to me
where the mistake is:

"For a projectile entirely to escape the gravitation of earth, it needs a
velocity of 7 miles a second. The thermal energy of a gramme at this speed is
15,180 calories... The energy of our most violent explosive--nitroglycerine--
is less than 1,500 calories per gramme. Consequently, even had the explosive
nothing to carry, it has only one-tenth of the energy necessary to escape the
earth... Hence the proposition appears to be basically impossible."

~~~
sandworm
He is correct. He is saying that a gram of fuel doesn't have enough energy to
get itself into orbit. That is a true statement. But he ignores the fact that
rockets spend many many grams of fuel to get a gram of non-fuel into orbit.

~~~
HaloZero
I don't think that right. He's saying you can expend 10 grams of
nitroglycerine, but the 10 grams isn't enough to get the 10 grams up into the
orbit how can it possible carry more.

~~~
simcop2387
Because the 10 grams don't enter orbit. They're expended and stay on Earth.
You'll still need more than the 10 grams because you will be lifting the some
portion of the 10 grams up into the atmosphere because you can't use or get
the energy in an instant. The explosion and propulsion happens over a period
of time.

------
gonvaled
This seems interesting:

> The menace to our people of vehicles of this type hurtling through our
> streets and along our roads and poisoning the atmosphere would call for
> prompt legislative action ...

Is this really so off-the-mark? Or have we just got used to vehicles being the
kings of the streets, displacing pedestrians and filling our breathing air
with pollutants?

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Early outrage over automobiles injuring and killing pedestrians at an alarming
rate threatened to stall the growth in driving. In response, the auto industry
undertook a major campaign to assert that cars should have the right-of-way
and to denormalize people walking and cycling on the street, pushing them to
the edges and criminalizing "jaywalking".

Now, when a person driving a car kills a person walking, the default reaction
is to blame the person walking for not being careful or attentive or visible
enough. We have been conditioned point the finger at the pedestrian's earbuds
rather than the obvious source of danger.

Even when a driver is found guilty of careless driving, the maximum punishment
- at least in most North American jurisdictions - is a $500 fine and maybe a
few demerit points.

~~~
sandworm
That's a bit of an exaggeration. Pedestrians are not automatically to blame in
every case. Today we have rules governing the movements of both pedestrians
and cars. There is no default winner. Pedestrians win on crosswalks and such,
but not in the middle of highways. And even there the car is no clear winner.
For instance, if both driver and pedestrian have earbuds in, society today
would say the driver is the more reckless. In fact most jurisdictions
specifically forbid headphones on drivers. None that I know of forbid them of
pedestrians.

And 500$ is certainly not the maximum punishment. Vehicular homicide,
negligence causing death, reckless endangerment, DUI ... even basic speeding
tickets in many jurisdictions are far higher than 500$.

~~~
gonvaled
Wherever the blame may be, and whatever the punishments are, the fact is that
the quote was more prescient than inaccurate: we should have legislated better
in the early days of the automobile. Now it is too late (or will take too long
for changes to take effect): the automobiles are ruling the roads, and
specially the cities, from streets to parking lots. Urban planning is done (in
most cases) with the goal of facilitating car circulation - pedestrians _and_
bicycles are an afterthought, when at all.

------
gfodor
My all time favorite from Paul Krugman:

"The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in "Metcalfe's
law"\--which states that the number of potential connections in a network is
proportional to the square of the number of participants--becomes apparent:
most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become
clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the
fax machine's."

~~~
melling
He says it really wasn't a prediction so he wasn't wrong:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to-
inte...](http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to-internet-
quote-2013-12)

Sounds like that might be the wrong thing to say.

------
xerophyte12932
I find this one odd:

>People give ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth
revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon... Whoever
wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is
of course the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of
astronomy; but the sacred scripture tells us [Joshua 10:13] that Joshua
commanded the sun to stand still, not the earth. \- Martin Luther (1483-1546)
[Criticizing Copernicus' heliocentric theory of planetary motion.]

Because Copernicus wasn't the first astronomer to suggest this. In fact
there's a very long line of Muslim astronomers that preceded Copernicus and
noticed that the Greek model was wrong, based on a very simple observation: if
the earth is stationary and every thing else revolves around it, the view of
the heavens should be the same every night (which it isn't). In fact the
Muslims actually proposed and experimentally tested several models before
Copernicus.

~~~
jacquesm
> every thing else revolves around it, the view of the heavens should be the
> same every night

Well, unless of course the heavens revolve as well. Which is how it was
usually pictured in those days, the distance of the stars was surprisingly
much larger than even the wildest estimates.

~~~
xerophyte12932
I obviously over simplified it. The original muslim astronomers not only
tested the greek model but several others using observational data and
mathematical models.

------
Buge
"It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to
achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such
statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years." \- John von
Neumann in 1949

------
codeulike
Also needs a page listing all the times that someone said that something
wouldn't work, and they turned out to be correct.

~~~
chetanahuja
Yeah... confirmation bias written all over that premise.

------
Simp
_Don 't go West young man. (Advice to Columbus.) I. A Voyage to Asia would
require three years. II. The western Ocean is infinite and perhaps
unnavigable. III. If he reached the Antipodes he could not get back. IV There
are no Antipodes because the greater part of the globe is covered with water,
and because St. Augustine said so. V. Of the five zones, only three are
habitable. VI. So many centuries after the Creation, it is unlikely that
anyone could find hitherto unknown lands of any value. \- Report of the
committee organized in 1486 by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to
study Columbus' plans to find a shorter route to India._

Makes you wonder about widely derided projects such as Mars One.

~~~
hga
See the other comment by simonh in this discussion
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9261989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9261989)):
Columbus had a multiplicity of detractors because his estimate of the
circumference of the Earth was off by a factor of 2, and to his dying day
insisted he'd found the East Indies, not the very fortuitous West "Indies". If
the Americas weren't there, he'd be at best a footnote in history, a crazy
explorer who'd perished with his crews.

------
qiqing
Reading this list just gives me a head-rush of joyous giddiness. Take that,
craven old conservatives and naysayers!

"Men might as well project a voyage to the Moon as attempt to employ steam
navigation against the stormy North Atlantic Ocean."

\- Dr. Dionysus Lardner (1793-1859), Professor of Natural Philosophy and
Astronomy at University College, London.

------
johnchristopher
> Animals, which move, have limbs and muscles. The earth does not have limbs
> and muscles; therefore it does not move.

> \- Scipio Chiaramonti [Professor of philosophy and mathematics at University
> of Pisa, arguing against the heliocentrc system, 1633]

I can't help thinking that particular sentence context is more political than
`scientific`.

~~~
Symmetry
It's also a classic example of an argument that proves too much. If the earth
can't move because it lacks limbs then surely the sun isn't able to move
either.

~~~
delinka
Ah, but do we _know_ the sun isn't made of limbs and muscles? ;-)

~~~
chetanahuja
But we can trivially see a boulder rolling down a hill and know that limbs are
not a pre-requisite for motion.

------
danieltillett
Is it too much to ask for references? I have had too many bad experiences over
the years where person x was alleged to have said something when in fact never
did.

------
asadlionpk
A derived blog post by Sam Altman: [http://blog.samaltman.com/technology-
predictions](http://blog.samaltman.com/technology-predictions)

~~~
chubot
Interesting that at least one prediction is too optimistic:

    
    
        Bitcoin is definitely going to be trading at $10,000 or more and in wide use by the end of 2014.
           - Many otherwise smart people, November of 2013
    

And I have to comment on:

    
    
        Superhuman machine intelligence is prima facie ridiculous.
           - Many otherwise smart people, 2015
    
    

It's not prima facie ridiculous, but the more common error is to take it for
granted. I just don't like it when people start to make predictions about the
future based on technology uploading brains to computer or simulating the
universe (which was done in the book "Superintelligence" which I just read).
It's far from obvious that those things are even possible.

------
signa11
not in the same vein as "it'll never work", but, arthur-eddington's heavy-
handed approach to subramanyam-chandrashekar's theory on maximum mass of a
stable white dwarf star (chandrashekhar's-limit), seems to have set back
cosmology by at least couple of decades. what is kind of interesting, is that,
lot's of luminaries f.e. bohr, fowler, pauli etc. agreed with his (chandra's)
analysis, but owing to reputation of eddington, were unwilling to support him
publicly.

an excellent book by arthur-miller (empire-of-stars) is quite _fascinating_

------
Cshelton
And just to think: what if the human race from the beginning of time, never
lost any knowledge. No libraries were burnt, books and theories weren't
banned, scientist kept their heads...on their bodies, info after a fallen
empire was retained, the dark ages never happened, the pyramid mystery would
never have been one, etc..., would we be several hundred years ahead of where
we are now? Or is there some existential force that dictates the progression
of innovation? Is it tied to the evolution of the human brains' capabilities?

~~~
johnchristopher
You don't need that `existential force` question to find hypothesis and
answers to your first question. You are framing your question by opposing
(`or`) that `existential force` to whatever your answer is to the first
question.

~~~
Cshelton
It's really more rhetorical. Clearly I can't just oppose it because there is
not a definitive answer. Just seeing what people think as far as the
progression of mankind goes.

------
andyidsinga
see also Clarke's Three Laws.

BTW, some of these remind me of some of the critics of travel to Mars

------
camperman
What's striking is how often expertise in one field is no guarantee of it in
another.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Or even in the same field really. Being an "expert" doesn't make you
omnipotent. Millikan, Rutherford, and Einstein were experts in atomic and
quantum physics, but it turns out they lacked the imagination to predict
controlled nuclear fission. To be fair, it's a very non-intuitive process, but
it just shows you how difficult predictions can be.

------
theklub
There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home. \-
Kenneth Olsen, president and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

If he had just said "data" instead of computer.

------
cpks
The harder problem: How does one overcome such a mentality?

